Effloresco Secundus
by romantiscue
Summary: Hermione died and woke up bearing a flowery name in a world full of shinobi. Harry was never the only person with a penchant for tripping into the most absurd of situations. Reincarnated!Hermione.
1. Prologue

**Effloresco Secundus**

Prologue: Dreaming other Dreams

* * *

The weather was lovely, and Sakura took the time to appreciate the early morning sunlight as she walked down the familiar path to the Academy. The street vendors were setting up their stands, and she spotted shopkeepers opening the doors to their stores and lingering outside for a moment to enjoy the morning air before they ducked into their respective shops.

The village was peaceful, and before the mid-day bustle broke the silence that reigned this early, it reminded her oddly of Hogsmeade. Well, except for the scale – Konoha was a lot bigger than the small wizarding village had been.

Stretching as she walked, Sakura made her way over the Academy yard and to a door at the back of the building, as she'd done every morning for several years now. As always, she stepped into the room behind the door and found it empty. Nobody else used the library this early, and Sakura occasionally wondered if any of the students in her class even remembered that it existed. She wouldn't have been surprised to find that they'd forgotten about it entirely – they'd only visited it as a class once, and that was back during their first year.

Fishing out the scroll she'd been studying yesterday, she sat down by one of the small tables and pulled out her notes. What was called Fuuinjutsu in this world was remarkably similar to what had been known as Ancient Runes in her old world, when she'd been Hermione. The similarity wasn't in the way the Fuuinjutsu seals were written, because the seals resembled kanji more than runes, but in the theories of their use.

Not that the books and scrolls she'd found available on the subject went into much detail. The scroll she'd found yesterday that now lay in front of her was the most advanced volume on Fuuinjutsu she'd found here – and she was very familiar with this library and what it contained. The public library had even less information on the subject, and Sakura wasn't sure if that was because Fuuinjutsu was considered too dangerous an art for anyone below the rank of genin (or perhaps chunin or jounin) to learn much about or if the lack was just a consequence of a general disinterest in the subject.

She had a difficult time imagining the latter to be the case though, since this was a village full of experienced shinobi who by all rights should be interested in anything that might keep them alive. Pursing her lips, Sakura diverted her annoyance and set to work.

The scroll had the most basic of all seals – what Sakura suspected was the Fuuinjutsu equivalent of the basic number runes, even though there were only five such seals where the number runes were zero to nine. In ascending order of power, the five seals trailed down the scroll with a short explanation for what they represented:

Earth (the hard and solid), water (the fluid and flowing), fire (the energetic and forceful), wind (the free and growing). The last seal was the Void, and though the descriptions of what the Void represented were vaguer than for the other seals, as Sakura understood it, it was what was beyond the "normal" world. It was the energy and power of chakra in its purest form, untouched by the elemental affinities she'd read about.

Sakura placed the notes where she'd drawn the stylized number seals next to the open scroll, and pursed her lips. A demiguise for zero, a unicorn for one, a graphorn for two, a runespoor for three, a fwooper for four, a quintaped for five, a salamander for six, the symbol of the unknown for number seven, an acromantula for eight and a hydra for number nine.

She spent some time just staring at both texts with narrowed eyes, and then let out an explosive sigh. Even if the theory behind their use was similar, she couldn't figure out if the runes had exact equivalents in the seals. Maybe number seven was something like the Void seal, but she based that thought more on her lack of information than any real clue about the truth of the matter, which was perfectly illogical and therefor useless.

Glancing down at her wrist-watch, Sakura sighed again. She'd wasted twenty minutes on the exact same thing she'd spent yesterday on, and she'd gotten nowhere. _Think rationally_, she heard an echo of her first mother admonish her, and at that she took a deep breath, closing her eyes. _I have no more information today than I had yesterday, I have no way of acquiring more information on Fuuinjutsu right now, and I can't force knowledge from nothing. It's time to move on to something else, at least until I have more information to do further research._ Sakura breathed out slowly, looked blankly at the scroll for a moment, and then got up to replace it on the shelf she'd found it.

She had about forty minutes until classes started, and since she was only managing to frustrate herself with her lack of progress, she might as well eat breakfast. Stretching, Sakura stood from the chair and made her way back out again, wiping a few leaves from the bench by the library door before sitting down. She usually ate a lot in the morning, since she preferred to spend the lunch break reading in the classroom and usually didn't eat again until classes were over. Compared to the constantly dieting girls in her class she was a little on the heavier side, but a lot of that was pure, solid muscle – something dieting didn't help one gain.

Sakura finished her sandwiches and moved on to the small bowl of vegetable soup, glad to find it warm still. Her mind turned towards the girls in class again, and she held back a contemplative frown. She still hadn't managed to figure out if they actually wanted to be in the Academy, or if they'd just assembled some rose-colored myth of what it supposedly meant to be shinobi and then decided they wanted to live out that fairytale. Admittedly, that thought could be applied most of the boys in her class as well, who seemed to focus more on going on "cool missions", "kicking ass" and "saving princesses" than actually _training_. Case in point: the dead-last in her class, one Uzumaki Naruto, was constantly going on about becoming Hokage, but skipped so many classes that she'd be shocked if he managed to graduate with the rest of the class.

Not that what the other students in her class got up to was any of her business, Sakura reminded herself as she finished the soup and leaned back on the wall with a satisfied sigh. She'd worked up quite a tan this way, though that hadn't really hadn't been her intention. With so much free time and a lack of close friends, she also spent a lot of time training in the sun, which had tanned her skin further.

It was hard to relate to children years younger than she was, and not only because of their shallowness and lack of discipline. Harry and Ron had been similarly undisciplined – but they'd had attributes that compensated for that, something she hadn't found in the children in her class yet.

Though admittedly, she hadn't looked very hard.

As she packed away the sandwich wrapping and the plastic bowl to be thrown away later, a replay of Ron's self-sacrificing chess game in their first year flashed before her eyes, as well as Harry's decision to save that Delacour girl in the second task... among other mental images. Her boys had been temperamental, impulsive and occasionally thoughtless – but they'd had so much heart, and skill at applying that heart in battle, that she hadn't been able to stop herself from admiring them. It wasn't like they'd been unwilling to practice and improve their magical skills either, they'd just disliked doing homework. Harry especially had always been eager to improve his magical skills, and that eagerness had only been enhanced by the danger they were in.

But she was probably being uncharitably harsh, Sakura conceded, since she and her boys had been in danger that had made improving themselves a priority. The students in class didn't have something to push them the way she, Harry and Ron had been pushed by one disastrous event after another. Perhaps becoming apprenticed under a jounin would rectify that, as real-life shinobi missions with all that entailed should hit everyone (including herself, admittedly, since she didn't know shinobi life very well yet) with a dose of reality.

She rounded the house with that thought still in mind, and then immediately had to contain a sigh when she clapped eyes on the most annoying member of her class. "Forehead girl," Ando Ami said with a sneer that twisted her childish features into something ugly, throwing the long purple bangs on the left side of her face over her shoulder. The girl's childish taunts might have hurt her, had Sakura actually been an insecure pre-teen. But since she was not, Ami was kind of like the fruit flies Sakura kept having to wave away from the fruit bowl in the kitchen – terribly annoying, but not much more than that. Especially since she couldn't really figure out why all the girl's taunts seemed aimed at her forehead. It was a bit on the larger side, but at least this time around she didn't have the noticeable buck teeth that had earned her the charming epithet 'Beaver the Bookworm' the first time she was this age.

"Aren't you going to say anything? Is that forehead of yours covering any brain cells at all, or just there to be a billboard for your to-do notes?" As taunts went, that one was actually pretty good. At least compared to the kind of asinine insults the girl usually threw around.

Despite that half-amused thought, or perhaps due to the frustration at her lack of progress on her current topic of research, Sakura let herself slip a little. "Why don't you quiet down and give that hole in your face some time to heal shut?"

Nara Shikamaru, who had apparently been sleeping on the lower branches of a nearby tree, snorted quietly and Sakura watched Ami's face turn a shade of red better suited for a tomato. _Crap._ She should have kept quiet and ignored the girl, the way she usually did. Just staring blandly at Ami whenever she decided to try and poke fun of Sakura's forehead, or her weight (which was well within the healthy, un-dieted, range) or whatever she'd decided to hone in on that particular day usually worked pretty well. It was a strategy she'd learned as Hermione, and one she should have kept to, no matter how annoyed she was today.

"You shut up!" Ami said, voice suddenly a lot higher in her anger, and Sakura watched with an internal eyeroll as the girl puffed up and tried to look down her nose at Sakura. It was a pretty miserable attempt, since Sakura was about two inches taller than Ami.

"I don't feel like dealing with you right now," Sakura said and then turned to walk through the Academy door. Behind her she heard Ami spluttering, but since the girl's Taijutsu and projectile skills were absolutely atrocious, she didn't even bother watch her back as she walked away. She'd hear the girl step closer if she did, or the rustling of cloth if Ami decided to start throwing kunai around.

Sakura was completely unsurprised when neither of the two happened, and she made her way to the classroom unmolested. Passing a few fellow early bird students, Sakura turned her thoughts to the team placements they were supposed to be assigned after the final test today. She wasn't sure if the other students were aware that the contents of the final examination was a matter of relatively public record, but she'd made sure to practice the possible E-rank Ninjutsu techniques required for a passing mark. The written portion of the test she was even less worried about – if there was one thing she'd taken with her from one persona to the next, it was her skills at studying and memorizing information.

The slightly worrying thought that the test would possibly require more than a few bunshin, kawarimi, kakuremino or nawanuke made Sakura's brows draw together as she sat down at the row of seats at the very back of the classroom. It had been 'her' chair for years now, when she realized that securing her score somewhere in the middle of the class was more likely to ensure she stayed overlooked, as was seating herself in a most unobtrusive spot. In that, at least, she'd changed. As Hermione, the thought of not showing her accomplishments to the world had been blasphemy. Though she'd struggled with the intentional lowering of her grades, she'd found she rather enjoyed being accomplished by herself, taking the lessons in what it meant to be a shinobi to heart. Subtlety. Secrecy.

Hm. Perhaps she hadn't changed that much after all. Taking lessons to heart was something she'd thrived on as Hermione.

Mentally shaking away her straying thoughts, Sakura turned her focus back to the worrying thought that her ridiculously small chakra reserves might actually stop her from graduating. She'd practiced almostobsessively with the leaf exercise to try to push the limits of her chakra output, but that exercise required a lot of hard work over a long period of time with very little result to show for it.

The classroom was filling up with students, and Sakura tried to stave of the building tension by massaging her temples. Worrying herself to a headache wouldn't do her any good.

"- Sasuke-kun!" Ami's voice rang out above the din and Sakura opened one eye just in time to see the purple-haired girl dive into the seat next to Uchiha Sasuke, closely followed by an equally loud, if slightly less obnoxious, blonde. The two girls immediately started bickering about who's 'rightful place' the seat next to their precious Rookie of the Year was, and Sakura pinched the bridge of her nose at the high-pitched shrieks the two girls were emitting.

"It's too early for this," Shikamaru muttered, sliding into a seat in the same row as Sakura and immediately crossing his arms and lying down on the table. Sakura wasn't quite as annoyed by that behavior as she was by the two shrieking pre-teen banshees, but she still frowned a little. She was starting to despair finding anyone who actually cared about studying.

"Early? There is no good time for this kind of behavior," Sakura said quietly, watching with some measure of sympathy for the Uchiha boy as the two girls began pulling on his shirt as they shouted to each other over his head. Sasuke was one of the few students taking the path they were on as seriously as she did, and as arrogant as he sometimes acted, she pitied him for having to deal with his so-called fangirls' behavior every day.

Honestly, Sakura couldn't quite understand why the boy hadn't just punched them both out yet, since his repeated attempts to convince them to leave him alone didn't lead to any long-term changes in the fangirls' behavior. Perhaps it was some naïve sentiment about how one 'shouldn't hit girls' – the kind of idiotic view Sakura thought should be discarded the moment one decided to become a shinobi. What were all these can't-hurt-girls, princess-saving people going to do when faced with an enemy kunoichi? Invite her to a pillow fight? It was one thing not to hit a _defenseless_ girl, but there were no defenseless kunoichi_._

Sakura was snapped out of her thoughts when Iruka walked through the door, breaking up the argument with a sharp glance and then moving to stand in front of the desk. It took a minute for the noise to fade into silence, but that was a good while shorter than it usually took for the class to pay attention unless Iruka shouted them all into submission. Which was admittedly rather effective, as the chunin teacher's temper was an Academy-wide legend.

"Today you will be tested to see if you have what it takes to become a genin," Iruka began, and just like that, everyone in class was leaning forward with intent expressions on their faces. The teacher smiled, a tad grimly. "The first of the two exams you will be performing today is a written test covering what you've learned during the years you've been Academy students."

"What? We can't remember all of it!" "Yeah! We're not machines, you know!" "Sensei, that's just cruel!" Only about a third of the class seemed intent on complaining, but Sakura felt fairly certain that none of the ones who complained the loudest would actually pass the test. It was also fairly obvious that they were letting their mouths run without actually thinking through what Iruka had said. Of course the exam wouldn't be on every little thing they'd ever learned here – that would make the test the size of two dozen very thick books, and would take weeks to complete even if they worked all day, every day.

"Troublesome," she heard Shikamaru murmur, and had to agree. How was it that these children had decided to become shinobi, and yet they couldn't be bothered to think things through before they complained? Well, weeding out the people who weren't ready for genin duties was what this examination was about, Sakura supposed as she watched Iruka tear into the loudest of the complainers.

When they were suitably cowed, he cleared his throat. "After the written portion of the exam, you will be taken to another room for the practical part." He turned to the other chunin who's just stepped into the classroom. "Mizuki, if you would?"

The light-haired chunin nodded and picked up a pile of papers from the desk in front of the chalk board. When he reached her row, placing two sheets of paper in front of her, he leaned forward a little. "I have no doubt you'll ace this, Sakura-chan," he murmured, and Sakura nodded a little hesitantly.

She'd never had a solid grip on the teacher's personality, but he'd always been kind to her. It seemed like all the teacher's had had students they'd considered their favorites, Iruka-sensei with Naruto (though that wasn't always obvious, she'd seen them eating at a food stand a few times), Suzume-sensei with Ino and Mizuki... with her.

Or that might have been the case, had she been a little more social. As it was, her impression of him had more to do with the way he'd sometimes give her a tip or two when they were practicing Taijutsu forms, something he didn't do for any of the other students unless they asked for help. Maybe his behavior had something to do with the way some of the other children treated her – assuming that she was badly affected by it wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination had she been any other student.

The questions weren't very difficult, so Sakura agreed with Mizuki's assessment: she was going to ace this. The first section was mostly about different kinds of jutsu and when their use was appropriate, a little about proper care for weapons and a larger section about first aid. The last section took up most of the second paper, and Sakura's brow furrowed. This one question was twice as difficult as anything else on the test had been. It wasn't the kind you could complete just by following the instructions properly or calling to mind the contents of a lecture; this question required you to combine basic trap-making skills with Genjutsu theory, and form a tactical maneuver in which to use the first two...

Sakura frowned, even as she carefully penned her answer. _This is not an Academy-level question._ What it was, however, was a chance to actually go all out on a test, since this was hopefully her last time here. She hadn't done that in years.

Mizuki collected the papers a good thirty minutes later, occasionally snatching one from under a student's nose, while Iruka gave two students who'd apparently tried to cheat a scolding lecture. She couldn't hear what he was saying, but from the two boys cowed postures, it must have been sufficiently blistering.

Iruka straightened and stepped back to the front of the room. "Alright, everybody!" Sakura was slightly surprised that the students who'd begun talking actually immediately quieted down. "Mizuki-sensei and myself will be waiting in the next room over. You will enter the room in alphabetical order with five-minute intervals..."

–

Sakura stepped out of the Academy with a spring in her step, headband resting snugly against her forehead, and decided to celebrate. She'd made the required three Bunshin, and had been surprised by how easy it was. She'd expected the test to require her to actually _do_ something with those Bunshin, and as she wandered towards her house, she wondered if this kind of examination was the Academy standard even during war-time.

She sure hoped not. Even Kiba – one of the most disruptive students in class, who turned in the least amount of work and whom Iruka lectured at least once a week – had passed. And he was now a part of Konoha's military. That was not a reassuring thought.

Stepping into the small yard outside her and her mother's house, she toed off her sandals just inside the door and called in through the partly open window, "Mother?"

Faintly, she heard, "In the backyard!" and moved towards her mother's voice. Their house was small and well-lived into, but Sakura liked it. Something about the atmosphere reminded her of Ron's house. Maybe it was all the little dents in the walls, with memories attached to every single one, or perhaps it just the feeling of a well-used and well-loved place.

Haruno Sayuri was a large woman, the occasional grey strand standing out in her otherwise short pink hair. When she stood, she towered over Sakura. "How did it go?"

Sakura tapped her forehead and Sayuri smiled, unsurprised. "This calls for strawberries," she said, wiping her hands on a small, dirty towel hanging at her waist. Sakura nodded, following her mother to the kitchen.

When they were seated at the small kitchen table, strawberries with milk in front of them both, Sakura admitted, "I didn't think it would be so easy."

Sayuri cocked her head, looking amused. "Easy for you, perhaps." Sakura shook her head, because she couldn't recall seeing _anyone_ without a headband – though admittedly, she hadn't been looking very closely. She said so and then explained the test, and when she was done Sayuri sat back. Her mother's brows were raised, and she looked thoughtful.

"That was not the test during my stint in the Academy," she said thoughtfully, tapping blunted nails against the tabletop. "We had to perform all E-rank techniques we'd learned, run an obstacle course and the written portion of the exam took five hours." Her voice was a little flat, and Sakura winced. Now she almost felt embarrassed at how proud she'd been to pass.

Sayuri snorted. "It's not like it's your fault. I'm sure Hokage-sama has his reasons." She finished off the last strawberries in her bowl and then looked up again, "And team assignments are tomorrow?" Sakura nodded, following her mother's lead in finishing her strawberries.

"Can't really give you any advice for that," Sayuri said, throwing the bowls into the sink. Sakura wasn't sure how she managed to keep them from breaking every time she did that, but could never hold back an automatic internal flinch at the expected crash.

Sayuri had been a genin hopeful in her day, but she'd resigned for some unexplained reason after completing the final exam. Her mother had never brought the subject up and Sakura had never pushed, no matter how curious she was. After her graduation, Sayuri had gone into construction, and aided by her well-trained body, she'd climbed up the ladder in the company she worked for until she became some kind of 'middle manager'. It apparently involved going to different construction sites, making sure nobody was screwing up, yell at them if they were and only then help with the actual building. 'I'm not wasting these muscles,' Sayuri had once told her when Sakura asked why she wasn't doing desk-work, like most managers presumably did.

"Your father would have been grumpy for weeks if he'd been here to see you wearing that," Sayuri said as they washed up, indicating her hitai-ate, and Sakura wasn't sure whether to grin or grimace. Haruno Ken had been a hard-working accountant, but had died in a freak accident when Sakura was six. It never seemed to pain Sayuri to speak of her dead husband, but though all she could see in her mother's eyes was fondness whenever she spoke of him, Sakura didn't much like it when the subject of her father was brought up.

Admittedly, that was only because it was her fault he was dead.

–

**A/N:** Working on new fics is the best cure for writer's block, in my opinion. When I work on just the one I feel incredibly stifled, "locked" into that one fic. Variation is the key.

...Where have all the good Naruto/HP fics gone? I don't even skim the crossover archive very often these days, because it's all just '[ninja] goes to Hogwarts' and frankly, that's been done to _death_. I suppose this story is my reaction to that disappointment. New life needs to be breathed into it, yeah?

On a side note: I'm officially recommending Loudest Voice's story "The Traitor and the NineTails". It's an amazing story for those of you into quality fics, despite the generic title (though the name's admittedly no worse than 'Teacher' is *blush*). It's not a crossover - but it's an Itachi-stays-in-Konoha fic, for those who like him. Political shenanigans! Detailed explanations of bloodlines! Interesting characterizations! (...The occasional jarring spelling mistake!) This story has too few reviews, and I hate to see underrated quality fics.

Oh, and: "Why don't you quiet down and give that hole in your face some time to heal shut?" was from, eh... somewhere. Some 'great comebacks list', or something.

Anyway, what do you think of the premise of Effloresco Secundus? And Sakura's mother, OC though she is? I have quite a bit of this story written and I can tell you that the focus is on Team 7, that it's detailed, slow-paced and that I'm having lots of fun writing it.


	2. Moving Forwards, Coming Together

**Effloresco Secundus**

_Chapter 1: Moving Forwards, Coming Together_

* * *

The next morning Sakura found herself in the same seat as always, next to the same sleepy Nara, again watching the classroom fill up. Everyone were wearing their new headbands, and Sakura held back a smile when she saw more than one person fiddling unnecessarily with their headband. Not that she blamed then; it was a point of pride for her as well.

"What are you doing here, Naruto? Only people who _passed_ the test get to come in for the team assignments," a boy's voice called, and Sakura looked up to see Uzumaki stick his tongue out at the other boy. She turned away with a sigh, not really caring one way or other what was going on between the blond and the heckler.

"Can't you see I'm wearing a headband?" he shouted, pointing at the headband in question. Why was it that most of the boys in class, and a few of the girls, kept trying to be as loud as possible?

Iruka explained that they'd be apprenticed in three-man cells to a jounin - something that apparently came as a shock to most of the class - and ignoring the hum of questioning voices, the chunin proceeded to name the teams and their members. "Team 7: Haruno Sakura -"

Sakura sat up at the mention of her name, a shiver of anticipation in her stomach. She was about to be paired up with the people she'd spend most her time with from here on out until she passed the chunin exam (and perhaps beyond), the people she'd have to learn to trust with her life and who she in turn would try to protect.

It was almost nostalgic, the images of Harry and Ron hovering in the wings of her mind. Sakura wasn't sure she'd ever be that close to anyone again, wasn't even sure she wanted to be, but there was the potential of that in a team.

"- Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto."

The blond Uzumaki immediately bounced up from his seat, pointing and shouting about how he shouldn't have to be on a team with 'the bastard' and Sakura sank slowly down into her seat, pinching the bridge of her nose to stave of her abruptly emerging headache.

"My condolences," Shikamaru murmured to her left, and Sakura grunted in reply. She should be thinking positive thoughts – she didn't actually know either Uzumaki or Uchiha, and just because this felt like a disaster in the making didn't mean it had to be. She'd been very different from Ron and Harry, but they'd still been the best friends Hermione could ever have asked for.

"- and I don't even know who Harumi Sakura is, anyway!" The blond sat down with a 'hmph!' and reluctantly taking that as her cue, Sakura got up from her seat and walked down to the chair next to Uzumaki. Coming up bedside him, she caught his attention and held out a hand.

"_Haruno_ Sakura, how do you do." Her voice was dry and she half-expected him to start shouting again, but instead he stared at her, blushing. After a moment, he clasped her hand in a grip that felt more uncertain than he usually acted. His palm was rough and calloused and Sakura mentally noted that, _At least he's a hard worker_.

"Have you met the bastard?" He waved a hand to his left and she bent over a little to look the Uchiha up and down. He was resting his chin on braided fingers, and would have looked uncaring if not for the muscle ticking in his jaw.

"I can't say I have," she said, voice still dry. Uzumaki said 'the bastard' like it was Uchiha's name, and it was a little funny to see the bastard in question trying not to react. "Hello, Uchiha-san." He turned a little to acknowledge her and nodded. It was more reaction than Sakura had expected, given what she'd noticed of the dark-haired boy's behavior before this. Then again, she hadn't thrown herself at him and screeched a declaration of eternal love in his ear. That might have something to do with it.

Still, he could have greeted her properly. _Arrogant_, she mused. She'd already known that though.

"Heheh, so I guess we're gonna be a team?" Naruto grinned at her, and Sakura smiled back a little. He looked excited, and his expression was kind of infectious.

"Indeed you are, Naruto, and you can talk about it later." Iruka put some emphasis on the last word of the sentence and Naruto ducked his head, scratching the back of his neck. "Now, you'll all meet your jounin instructors this afternoon..."

–

"What are you doing, dead-last?" Sasuke asked after he and Sakura had spent a few minutes watching the blond boy stare at the door. "Staring at the door isn't going to make our jounin-sensei get here any quicker." He snorted derisively, and though Sakura agreed with the sentiment, the Uchiha's tone left much to be desired. They were meant to work together, as a team, not start internal fights.

Naruto threw an eraser at the other boy's head. Sasuke dodged it with a turn of his head and Sakura spent the next minute watch the two boys glare at each other.

"You do realize that bickering amongst ourselves isn't going to help either?" Sakura asked, and they both broke of their glaring to look at her. Naruto was frowning and Sasuke was scowling, but at least they stopped trying to light each other on fire with their eyes. "We're a team."

Naruto's frown was replaced by a grin and he nodded, but Sasuke's lips tightened and he turned away. "A three-man cell are two people too many," the boy muttered, and Sakura wasn't really surprised at that statement, though she was disappointed. Something told her that this boy would have been in Slytherin, had he been a Hogwarts student. He had that look about him, like Zabini, a kind of cold flame burning in the back of his eyes.

"Bastard!" Naruto shouted and Sakura watched him leap forward and land on the other boy's desk. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? Every awesome shinobi started out in a team! The Shodai Hokage, Nidaime, Sandaime... even Yondaime!"

Sakura stared at him, a bit surprised that he'd known that and vaguely wondering if the blond knew any 'awesome shinobi' other than the Hokages. She'd heard of his ambition, of course, but there were more 'awesome shinobi' than the kages. Sasuke raised an eyebrow, but didn't actually disagree, for which Sakura was thankful. Fighting amongst themselves before they'd even met their jounin would be disgraceful.

Naruto still looked suspicious, leaning forward like he thought he might see scorn in Sasuke's dark eyes if he got closer. Sakura thought he was probably right, so she was relieved when the door suddenly opened. All three turned to watch a man with gravity-defying grey hair step into the room. A half-opened eye surveyed them briefly.

"My first impression of you is... that you two are about to do something kinky," he pointed lazily at the boys, "on the table and that you're -" his finger moved to point at her, "-a voyeur."

Sakura felt her world tilt a little, and stared at the man with open astonishment. In her peripheral view, she saw the two boys do the same.

The jounin slowly scratched the back of his head and then shrugged, apparently at the lack of response. "Anyway, meet me on the roof in five minutes." He turned back to the door.

"Who the hell are you?" Naruto suddenly shouted, getting off the desk and pointing at the tall man. Sakura agreed with the question, though she wouldn't have put it quite like that. It wasn't like she wasn't used to weird and creepy teachers, but that comment had still been unexpected. And rude.

The shinobi turned back to look at them, gaze still lazy and half-lidded. "Hm? I'm your jounin-sensei. Maybe." He shrugged again, seeming unconcerned.

"Or maybe you're just a pervert!" Naruto said, cheeks puffing up in indignation.

Before this meeting could move completely off the rails, Sakura spoke up. "Excuse me, but we're not going to follow an unknown shinobi anywhere without first seeing identification." Her voice came out a bit sharper than she'd meant for it to be, but at least the man looked a bit more awake now.

He tilted his head. "You were told that you would be meeting your jounin-sensei here this afternoon, no?"

"We were also told that our jounin-sensei would be here two hours ago," she paused, pursing her lips. "You could be someone else entirely. Maybe you've killed him and decided to take his place for whatever reason, maybe he's running late and you decided to take advantage of that, or maybe you really are him – but as you haven't given us any reason to believe that, why should we follow you?"

She felt both Naruto and Sasuke staring at her, and straightened her back. She wasn't entirely sure what the protocol was in this situation, but following unknown men _anywhere_ was something she'd learned was a bad idea when she was a toddler.

The shinobi blinked slowly. "Maa, suspicious little girl, aren't you?"

"It's unbecoming for a shinobi not to be," Sasuke said behind her, and she heard him getting up and moving forward. Keeping her eyes on the still shinobi in front of her, she hoped the Uchiha wasn't about to do something stupid.

"Yeah," said Naruto, moving to stand on her other side.

"And what were you planning on doing if I was a suspicious replacement of the jounin-sensei I've just killed?" There was a trace of amusement in his voice, and that made Sakura's shoulders relax - a little. Presumably, a 'suspicious replacement' would have attacked them by now. Or maybe that was to get them to lower their guards.

"Fight you, of course! Pervert!" He added the last word like it somehow cemented the shinobi's suspicious behavior.

"You think you're on my level?" he asked, leaning against the door frame, and Sakura had a feeling that if she could see his eyebrows, they'd have been raised.

"Hell yeah!" Naruto said, and Sakura leaned to the side and snatched his sleeve before he could do anything but tense his muscles in preparation for a lunge.

"It's not like we have much choice, is there?" she asked quietly, eyes never straying from the shinobi's face.

He hummed and then tilted his head, looking her up and down. "You believe fighting an unknown shinobi would be a better course of action than signaling for assistance?"

"If you are that far above us, you wouldn't let us signal for anything," Sasuke said, and she heard the slide of metal against rough cloth. He made a valid point.

"And you'd take the chance? Risk your teammates lives?" he asked, eyes flitting between the three of them. Sakura pinched the long senbon she had hidden in her sleeve.

"It's three of us and one of you, and we have no other viable course of action," Sakura said. "Maybe we should have signaled for help the moment you told us to follow you without first showing us any kind of identification, but it's a bit too late for that now."

"Indeed it is." Then he was gone. It took her a second to tense, a moment slower than Sasuke, and then spin around when she heard him land behind them. She moved her senbon in a sharp arch, saw Sasuke flick a kunai from the other direction and Naruto move to punch the man, and knew that if this guy was truly an enemy they'd be dead. He was too fast. Jounin fast.

A second later, they were still alive.

"Sloppy, wasting a kunai by throwing it in such close quarters. And what would using a senbon to stab someone without having a specific target in mind do?" They spun around again to find the guy crouched on a desk, chin in his hand. He still looked bored. "Finally, I'm sure I've seen drunken brawlers aim more accurately with their fists than that."

Naruto puffed up again, and again Sakura held him back. "Don't just jump at the guy, dead-last," Sasuke hissed.

"Kage bunshin no jutsu!" There was a surge of chakra, and then ten copies of Naruto were jumping at the guy. Sakura would have sighed a little more at that if she hadn't been busy being slack-jawed. This technique had come up in her research, read that it was restricted to jounin and required a lot of chakra. Why could Naruto perform it?

That was a thought for later. "Naruto, make a clone to get assistance," she hissed in the original's ear and a second later, there was another clone standing in front of her. Sasuke stood next to the now-open window, and they both watched as the gray-haired shinobi tore through Naruto's clones like they were paper. The clone the blond had made last threw itself out of the window, just in time for the tall shinobi's kunai to tear into it and leave behind a cloud of smoke. Damn it.

"You kids," he said, turning towards them. His eye was narrowed and dark, and Sakura felt the bottom of her stomach fall to her feet. She readied her stance. Sasuke's knees bent. Naruto's fists came up.

"- pass!" he finished, pulling a scroll out of a pocket in a lightning-quick move Sakura could barely follow. She blinked rapidly, trying to understand this sudden turn while the man unfolded the scroll. On it were the words: 'TEAM LEADER, TEAM SEVEN' and underneath that, 'HATAKE KAKASHI'. Breath whooshing out in surprise, Sakura felt her heart slowly returning to its normal rhythm.

"Hatake Kakashi?" Naruto said, and she turned to find him squinting suspiciously at the bared paper.

Sasuke focused on something else. "Pass? 'Pass' what?" He sounded both irritable and still suspicious, so apparently she was the only one to recognize the name.

"Pass the test to become my minions, of course!" His eyes closed as he grinned at them, the cloth mask covering the lower part of his face moving as he spoke.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Naruto was pointing again, voice raising, and Sakura wondered if the crown of her already strange team was going to be an even stranger teacher.

"Stop yelling, dead-last, he showed us identification." Sasuke rolled his shoulders, sounding annoyed. He was scowling again, and Sakura was starting to wonder if that was the Uchiha's default expression. She'd never payed enough attention to him to notice.

"What, that piece of paper could be any piece of paper! And Sakura said this guy could have killed our real teacher, so maybe he stole it from him!" That was actually a reasonable leap of logic, and Sakura was a bit surprised to find that someone she'd pegged as 'not overly bright' would make it so quickly. Then again, she'd thought the same of Ron at first, but had never been able to beat him in chess – and she was no slouch at that game.

"Maa, so suspicious..." Hatake was leaning back on the desk, the one bared eye looking very amused. "Here." He tugged out a slim chain from under his vest, holding it up for inspection. Two dogtags, with a number series marching down their lengths were cuffed to the chain. When the jounin puched his chakra into it, the letters of his name revealed themselves. The chakra conduit dogtags all shinobi wore required a burst of the owner's chakra to reveal his or her name, though the shinobi's registration number was carved into the metal and thus always visible.

"I don't get it," Naruto muttered and Sakura heard Sasuke snort. Before they could start yelling at each other, Sakura explained the meaning of the dog tags.

"Well read, hmm?" Hatake said, and then continued without waiting for a reply, "I had planned to test you as a team, but since you're apparently already capable of teamwork..." He shrugged, the movement slow and indolent. "Welcome to Team 7."

–

Sakura sat in between her teammates, peeling an orange and listening with half an ear as Naruto waxed poetic about ramen. Kakashi had told them to gather at this training ground an hour ago, but had yet to show up. Finding herself completely unsurprised, Sakura weighed the thought of wreaking revenge on the jounin (a scenario she held on to mostly because the idea gave her a feeling of tremendous satisfaction, rather than because she thought she'd actually succeed) against the thought of simply bringing some scrolls with her every morning to keep herself occupied. Because she had a vague suspicion that the lateness would be a regular thing.

"- and where is that pervert anyway?" Naruto finished his rant, apparently having shifted topic from ramen to their new teacher's tardiness.

"Would you like an orange, Naruto?" Sakura asked, stalling any further noisy fuming on the blond boy's part. He immediately nodded eagerly, and she handed one over. Glancing at Sasuke from the corner of her eye, she silently threw one in his direction as well. She had a feeling that the Uchiha wouldn't have accepted it had she actually asked him if he wanted one. As it was, she ignored the way he stared at her for a moment before he to her surprise started peeling it.

"This is really good!" The blond boy didn't bother to split the orange into wedges before biting into the revealed fruit flesh. "Sh'anks!" he said around a mouthful and Sakura nodded, irrationally wondering if bright hair and eating like a pig went together or if it was just a coincidence that both Ron and Naruto ate like they were starved.

"Dead-last, you're spitting on her," Sasuke said, exaggerating the case a little as he steadily consumed the wedges of his own orange.

Naruto immediately glared at the other boy, before turning to her with a grimace. "So'wwy," he said, mouth still full. Sakura hid a small smile behind her own orange and nodded.

"It's alright, but perhaps next time you could try speaking _after_ you finish what you have in your mouth." The blond nodded, blushing lightly and scratching the back of his neck. He all but radiated sheepishness.

"I hope you have one of those for me, too," a voice spoke up behind them, and all three of them jumped. When she recognized the voice of their jounin-sensei, Sakura discreetly poked the long senbon back into her sleeve.

"I assumed that since you took so long to get here, you ate on the way," she said in a deadpan voice. Sasuke snorted, finishing the last of his wedges with a slight smirk.

"So uncute," Hatake said with a mournful sigh, coming up around them to seat himself on one of the three wooden poles opposite them.

"Sorry," Sakura said, still in the same flat tone of voice.

Hatake dropped the mournful expression. "Well, since we're all here now -"

"We've been here for over an hour already," Naruto muttered, arms crossed with a petulant expression on his face.

Hatake stared at the blond, eye closing in that hidden grin of his. "Ahem. I was rescuing a cat in a tree..."

"And that took an hour?!" Naruto fairly bounced on the spot, looking like he wanted to lunge forward and strange the older shinobi.

"...It was a very tall tree." Hatake cleared his throat and continued, "Since we're all gathered, I think we should introduce ourselves!" He clapped his hands together, looking inappropriately cheerful.

"You go first," Sasuke said, also crossing his arms. For good measure, Sakura followed the boys' lead and stared at their teacher, her arms crossed as well.

"Well, since you put it so politely... You already know my name, I don't care to talk about what I like and what I don't, you're too young to hear about my hobbies and my dreams for the future aren't any of your business." He said all this in one even breath, and then grinned some more. "Your turn!"

He gestured at Sakura, who felt a spark of genuine annoyance alight in her chest. Not something she felt often towards teachers who weren't trying to kill her. Taking a deep breath, she said, "Fine. In that case: if you're any kind of teacher you should already know my name. I have a lot of things I like and quite a few that I don't, my hobbies are mostly based on things I like and my dreams for the future are an extension of my hobbies." She couldn't say it as evenly as he could in one breath, and after a small pause she added, "Pleased to meet you."

Sasuke had braided his fingers together in front of his face, but Sakura caught the edge of his smirk. Naruto wasn't doing anything at all to hide his own large grin, and bumped her shoulder in a friendly manner before leaning forward.

"Hi, sensei!" he chirped, "If you had time to save cats in trees, I'm sure you had enough time to find out what my name is too. I like ramen! I don't like the time it takes to boil the noodles. My dreams don't have much to do with ramen, though they probably would have if I had been a civilian instead of a shinobi. My hobbies have a lot to do with ramen though!" He grinned, and Sakura had to readjust her views on the blond boy again. He really wasn't as stupid as he seemed at first glance, not if he could do the anonymous introduction as well as she could.

Sasuke went next, voice steady and smooth. "I have no doubt most of the people in the village knows my name. The few things I do like are overshadowed by the very many things I dislike. I don't have a dream per se, and hobbies are useless." His voice was flat and clipped, and when he stopped speaking both Sakura and Naruto were staring at him.

"Could you be any more depressing? Seriously, you didn't even reveal anything much and you still spread more gloom than a dark cloud..." Naruto muttered. Sakura smothered a snicker at the blond boy's tone of near-incredulous irritation, even as Sasuke scowled at him.

"I suppose he'll be the antidote to your cheerfulness, lest we drown in it," she said, mouth twitching. Naruto stuck out his tongue at her, but Sakura was more focused on the way Sasuke's scowl relaxed.

"How did I end up passing such an uncute team?" Hatake said, staring at them for a moment before slowly shaking his head. "Well, lets see if I can't fill out your introductions a little!" He grinned at them, proceeding to list their Academy scores, what subjects they'd been strongest and weakest in and what they liked to do in their free time.

Sakura was surprised to hear that Naruto's best test scores were in strategy, and for a fraction of a second the Ron's picture was superimposed over the blond's face in her mind. Apparently Naruto's favorite hobby was gardening, which was also kind of surprising, but which mitigated the sudden pang of painful nostalgia. She'd been less surprised that Sasuke really didn't have any particular hobbies outside of training (at least not that Kakashi had found out), and that he was strongest in Ninjutsu. She remembered reading that the Uchiha clan was known, among other things, for their fire jutsu.

He proceeded to tell the boys that Sakura's strength lay in information gathering, something Sakura didn't _quite_ agree with but also didn't protest, and that her main hobby was reading. That was true enough, she supposed.

When he was done making their introductions for them, Kakashi clapped his hands together, fairly radiating cheerfulness. Before he could continue, however, Sakura decided to speak up. Or perhaps show off, as it were.

"Hatake-sensei," she said, "While I can't make a complete introduction of you to the team, you're the one they call 'the Copy-cat', if I recall correctly. You're said to have copied over a thousand jutsu, so I guess that would be your strength?" she paused, looked up to gauge his reaction, and then continued when she couldn't read him, "You have the Sharingan in your left eye..." she trailed off when Sasuke stiffened noticeably and then finished with, "And you're in every village's Bingo Book."

Perhaps she should have told Sasuke first. Sakura kept herself from fiddling with the hem of her shirt in the silence after her words, and then the jounin nodded at her.

"You've done your homework," he concluded, and feeling acutely uncomfortable with the way Sasuke was staring at their teacher and Hatake's blank expression, Sakura shrugged faintly. She'd messed that up.

"I read a lot. About everything." Shrugging again, she was relieved when their teacher nodded and leaned back, looking less blank. She added, "Plus, you are, kind of, very famous." The last part came out a bit dry, and Sakura felt her face heat when the jounin chuckled. But at least the tension in his gaze defused.

"Why do you have the Sharingan?" Sasuke interrupted suddenly, fists clenched in his lap. From his expression, Sakura thought the question must have burst out without the normally self-contained boy's permission. There was a terrible hope in his eyes that Sakura didn't want to see, because she had a feeling that the last Uchiha was hoping he might not be the last Uchiha after all. It was obvious to her that the eye must have been transplanted from an Uchiha, though she was unsure of how the jounin would be able to use it if that was the case. As she'd understood it, bloodlimit carriers' entire bodies were engineered for use of their bloodlimits.

"Maa, it seems we've wandered away from today's intended path," Hatake said, eye fixed on Sasuke. "Naruto, Sakura, you're dismissed for the day. Same time, same place tomorrow." Nodding quickly, and tugging at Naruto's sleeve when he looked like he was about to protest, Sakura got up and pulled the blond along behind her.

Looking over her shoulder before they moved out of sight, Sakura caught a quick snapshot of Kakashi crouched in front of Sasuke. She hadn't meant to caused that expression to appear on her teammate's face, and she hoped dearly that she wouldn't have cause to see it again any time soon.

* * *

**A/N:** I find that too many fics use the canon bell test and the canon introductions, so here goes...

What did you think of this chapter? Do tell!


	3. Though Rarely Proud in Loneliness

**Effloresco Secundus**

_Chapter 2: Though Rarely Proud in Loneliness_

* * *

The next day Sasuke was quieter than usual, but to Sakura's discreet but attentive looks he didn't _seem_ to be too hurt or upset. Or unwilling to argue with Naruto, who immediately upon his arrival had started a brawl with the dark-haired boy. _Maybe it's a male thing?_ Sakura thought as she watched the Uchiha soundly trash the blond. _Or maybe just a Naruto thing?_ She'd planned to be a bit more careful around the dark-haired boy today, but apparently Naruto knew how to handle their dark-haired teammate better than she did – at least in this instance.

Unsure if she should interfere, since this was technically sparring and Naruto didn't appear to be getting very injured no matter how much he was smacked around the field, Sakura stood to the side and watched them. She'd arrived fully prepared to apologize for her thoughtless words, but perhaps Sasuke needed to work things out this way. Or needed to pretend he didn't need to work things out at all.

"What do you think?"

Sakura nearly jumped out of her skin, her senbon flying in the direction of the voice before she'd even made the conscious decision to use it.

"Hmm. Good reflexes," Hatake-sensei observed, poking at the senbon stuck in the tree next to his shoulder. He'd moved out of its trajectory with a small twitch of his body, and pulled it out of the tree trunk with an ease that annoyed Sakura a little. She could never get it out of wood without wriggling and turning it, which usually took at least half a minute.

"Thank you," she said, a bit stiffly. "And good morning, Hatake-sensei."

He waved a hand lazily in her direction. "'Kakashi' is fine. And it's hardly morning."

She nodded, breathing out in a slow exhale to let her growing irritation abate. She knew it wasn't morning, since he hadn't felt like showing up until eleven. "What do I think about what, Kakashi-sensei?" she asked, focusing on the first thing he'd said instead of giving into the urge to lecture him. She deserved this small annoyance for her ill-thought out comment yesterday.

He eye-grinned at her in a way that made her want to dent his head, and then gestured towards the boys. Who hadn't paused in their fighting or even noticed Kakashi's arrival. Sakura sighed quietly as she watched them. "I think that Naruto isn't going to learn much from being beat up and that Sasuke isn't going to learn much from beating someone up," she said, frowning when the Uchiha threw their teammate into a tree. _This kind of stress-relief isn't really all that constructive in the long run._ If stress-relief was what this was.

"Oh? Why?" His nose was suddenly stuck in a book, and Sakura resisted the impulse to stomp away, or ignore the jounin. If he wanted to speak with her, he could at least do her the courtesy of giving her his undivided attention.

"Because this isn't a spar. It's too unequal." She tilted her head. "Not that Naruto seems to be taking much damage, but still." Without fail, the blond got back up after every punch or kick that sent him to the ground. It was actually quite impressive.

"Hmm." Kakashi looked at her over the edge of his book. The orange cover was familiar, but Sakura couldn't place where she'd seen it before. "Some people learn better this way. Or so I've been told." He eye-smiled at her again and Sakura suddenly felt like she was standing in front of one of her Professors, being tested. It made her back tense a little, because she couldn't say what the source of that feeling was. Just that this time, Kakashi's smile didn't seem engineered to cause irritation.

"I have a hard time seeing that. Maybe after they've been given some pointers on their respective fighting styles - " though Naruto didn't seem to have much of a 'style'; his fists flew like a brawler's might, rather than a shinobi, "- so that they'd have something specific to try to improve while they fight." At least that's what she'd tried to do for her boys when she as Hermione was correcting their homework. Glancing quickly at Kakashi from the corner of her eye, she found him with his eyes on the fight.

"Perhaps you're right," he murmured after a moment before closing the book with a decisive snap. When he began moving forward at a slow amble, Sakura followed, trying to keep her observation of him as discreet as she could. He didn't seem mad about yesterday either, but since he was a jounin, she couldn't really trust that what he appeared to be was anything like what he actually was. Though she rather doubted that she'd be able to discern the truth just by looking at him, Sakura couldn't help but try.

In the next moment the jounin was suddenly behind Sasuke and Naruto, and Sakura watched as his hands clamped around the back of their necks and then slammed their heads together. _Ouch._

"Aren't you even going to greet your teacher?" the jounin said as the boys rubbed their foreheads and glared up at him. Kakashi's tone was one of such profound disappointment that it couldn't be anything but fake, and Sasuke's glare deepened. Naruto was a bit more proactive.

"We showed up way before you did! You should be greeting us, lazy pervert!"

Kakashi sighed, shaking his head and looking quite put out. "What a way to talk to your teacher."

With an admirable single-mindedness, or perhaps a lack of attention, Naruto stopped paying attention to Kakashi the moment his gaze met hers. His eyes widened. "Sakura-chan, when did you get here?"

Sakura smiled a little, amused. "A while ago. Good morning." She added the last part a bit drily, since morning had come and gone as they waited for Kakashi to arrive.

Naruto grinned and waved, and Sakura was surprised to see Sasuke give her a small nod in greeting as well. Had he ever greeted anyone while at the Academy? "So what are we gonna do today, sensei?" The blond asked, and in the next breath continued, "Are we gonna go on an awesome mission? Protect a princess or the Daimyo – or are you gonna teach us an awesome jutsu?" When he'd finished, he looked at the jounin like a puppy waiting for a treat.

"We're genin, Naruto," Sakura said before Kakashi could make some flippant comment or Sasuke could say something that would restart the fight, "Important missions like protecting or escorting royalty, or the Daimyo, are given to high-ranking shinobi." Which he technically should have known, though she wasn't very surprised that he didn't.

The blond looked so disappointed it was almost comical. Had he really thought they'd be sent out on important missions straight out of the Academy?

"Sakura is right," Kakashi said and lazily scratched the back of his neck. "Today you will be doing team exercises."

Naruto's head turned back around to stare at Kakashi. "Whaaat? But we did those all the time in the Academy!"

"Did you now?" Kakashi asked very mildly, and Naruto's eyes suddenly narrowed warily at their teacher. Like he'd been walking along a peaceful road only to suddenly spot something that may or may not be a trap. "And these exercise were tailored for your current team?"

Naruto blinked, then turned away with a huff, arms crossed. Sakura covered the smile that tugged on the corners of her mouth, because that was a definite pout on the blond's face.

"Great!" The jounin chirped, clapping his hands together and fairly radiating cheerfulness. "Let us begin..."

–

The team exercises Kakashi had been drilling them in over the course of the week had Sakura collapsing into bed every night, bruised and exhausted. Her mother found it very amusing and had begun heaping her breakfast plate with a lot more food than Sakura usually had in the mornings.

The exercises consisted mostly of getting through various obstacle courses as a team. Points were deducted for not helping your teammates when they needed it, not asking for help when you needed it yourself, and for solving the course as a group of individuals rather than a cohesive unit. Sakura had been unsurprised that Sasuke had trouble with the theme of these exercises, but she'd been both surprised and embarrassed to find that her own skills in this area weren't nearly as developed as she'd thought.

Sure, she didn't have any trouble helping the two boys when they needed it, and though it rankled that they were both so obviously physically stronger than her, she could and did ask for help; what she was less well-versed in though, was working as a real team. Moving with the team, rather than taking care of her own little niche of the obstacle course and expecting the boys to do the same.

She hadn't moved in concert with Harry and Ron, she'd moved _alongside_ them. And until this week, she hadn't realized it.

What she'd had with her boys had definitely been teamwork, but it hadn't been the kind of teamwork needed in a military cell. They'd had the caring part of what it meant to be a team down, and the knowledge that accurately judging the team's strengths and weaknesses was important, but when she'd been with Harry and Ron there had never been the sense that 'a team is only as strong as its weakest link', because the way they'd fought had been so individual. Oh, certainly shinobi found and developed their own personalized ways of fighting over time, but those ways of fighting were still perfectly useful when part of a team. At least, that was the impression Sakura had picked up from Kakashi's short, drawled lectures.

The jounin was frighteningly observant, even when lounging on the lower branch of a tree with his nose stuck inside his book and seeming for all the world like he had better things to do than look their way. When Sasuke had almost skewered Naruto with a kunai, Kakashi had somehow been there to snatch the weapon out of the air, and when Sakura had almost tripped into a trap Naruto had set off, Kakashi was there to push her out of the way of an incoming rain of senbon she wouldn't have been able to dodge or deflect with her own long senbon.

That didn't mean that Kakashi wasn't letting them get a fair number of scrapes and minor wounds, of course. He only stepped in when they would have gotten seriously hurt if he didn't – though how he knew when they were about to get hurt, Sakura had no idea. Even the few times he'd sparred with them, he never appeared to be especially attentive, nose stuck in that damnable orange book of his.

"I think he's trying to kill us today," Naruto gasped, all but collapsing next to her. The boy was normally the last one to tire, but today's obstacle course had required near non-stop running, and it had taken its toll.

"You say that every day," Sasuke muttered, trying and failing to keep his own panting breaths from hitching his voice.

Sakura herself was panting too hard to speak at all. She hadn't thought that even her stamina would be this much less than her teammates', and it was quite frankly rather frustrating.

"Yeah, but today he's transformed from an oni to the freaking _devil_!"

"My, my, what an impolite thing to say about your kind and caring sensei, Naruto-kun," Kakashi spoke up from behind them, and Sakura was too tired to even twitch in surprise.

"'Kind and caring', my ass," Naruto muttered, exhaling sharply. Sakura heard his breathing even out and wondered if her blond teammate's stamina and rapid recovery wasn't some kind of bloodlimit. Sasuke was still panting, after all, and he'd been at the top of their class.

"What was that, Naruto-kun? Did you want an more difficult exercise tomorrow? My, how ambitious you are!" Kakashi beamed at the blond.

Sakura heard Naruto struggle with himself and then puff up. Recognizing the expression on his face, Sakura thwacked him over the head before he could get any farther than "Bring it -", apparently in the exact same moment Sasuke decided to punch the blond's flank. Naruto squawked.

"What was that?" The jounin sounded amused, and looked like he was cocking his eyebrow at the boy behind the tilted headband.

"That was Naruto saying 'no thanks'," Sakura said, her own breathing finally stabilizing. Kakashi hummed, and after a moment of silence where Sakura was deeply grateful to be allowed to sit down, she ventured, "Kakashi-sensei?"

She saw his eye flicker up from the pages of that book, and took that as an invitation to continue. "I was wondering... when are we going to learn tree-walking?" It was a fairly basic genin-level chakra manipulation, after all, and she'd spotted another genin team practicing it a few days ago.

"Hmm? You know about that?" Sakura stared at the man for a moment. It wasn't like it was some hidden skill, what with how even the shinobi inside the village occasionally traveled over rooftops and ran up walls.

"Even I know about that, sensei!" Naruto said, though Sakura wasn't sure if that was actually true or not. He might just be trying to challenge Kakashi.

"And when even the dobe knows something, it's obviously common knowledge," Sasuke added. Sakura reached over to slap the back of his head before Naruto could pounce. The Uchiha always looked surprised the few times she'd done that to him, despite the times he'd seen her do the same to Naruto, and Sakura had yet to figure out why. He didn't usually retaliate though, and Sakura wasn't sure if she was grateful or annoyed with the lack of response. If Naruto had done something similar, Sasuke would have been on him in a heartbeat.

The jounin cocked his head. "And you all want to learn?"

There was, unsurprisingly, an unanimous agreement and Sakura wondered if Kakashi took some kind of perverse pleasure out of drawing things out like this. No, scratch that: she was _certain_ that he enjoyed trying their patience.

"Hmm, you have been working pretty hard all week." Naruto nodded energetically at this, head bobbing like on one of those dolls her first parents had kept on the dashboard of their car. "Perhaps my cute genin team does deserve a reward..." Kakashi idly scratched his chin, ignoring the grimaces at being called his 'cute genin team'.

"Alright." The orange book was snapped shut. "I'll teach you."

A few minutes later, Sakura wondered if Kakashi had _ever_ taught a genin team before. She'd just thought he was lazy, but perhaps that wasn't all there was to it. Kakashi apparently thought that telling them to try to attach themselves with chakra to a suitably large tree and start running up the trunk. That was it. If he hadn't shown himself capable of running them into the ground with different training exercises this past week, she'd have rated his teaching prowess somewhere around Professor Binns' level.

But it wasn't like Sakura wasn't used to teachers who were incompetent for one reason or other. The boys didn't seem to mind either- they immediately took off running, obviously already in stiff competition to prove that they'd complete the exercise faster than the other. Sakura wasn't sure why Sasuke seemed to take Naruto's explicit and implied challenges seriously when it was quite obvious that Sasuke himself was, at least for the moment, the more competent shinobi.

Sakura tried not to acknowledge the insistent, prodding annoyance that they boys had immediately set each other up as rivals, like that was the natural development of their team dynamics. She hadn't done anything impressive yet and wasn't particularly inclined to show off unnecessarily, but Sakura knew she didn't screw up nearly as often as Naruto did. Yet Sasuke apparently hadn't even taken a rivalry with _her_ into consideration.

"Not planning on joining them?" Kakashi asked, coming up beside her. Sakura immediately loosened the fists she hadn't even realized she'd clenched, discreetly stretching her fingers.

"In a moment." She sighed, rolled her shoulders and then turned to a copse of trees behind her, opposite the two trees Sasuke and Naruto were working away at. Kakashi meandered after her in silence.

Finding a suitable tree, Sakura pooled chakra into her right hand and pressed it against the bark. Unprepared for the resulting explosion, she jumped backwards, shaking out the pins-and-needles feeling in her palm with a mental curse.

There was a gouge the size of a tennis ball in the wood, splintered at the edges with cracks spreading from the point of impact and outwards into the still-intact bark.

"Maa, one would think you didn't listen to the instructions you received just a few minutes ago, Sakura-chan," Kakashi said with a drawl, and Sakura clenched her teeth.

"I did listen, Kakashi-sensei, I just wanted to try something." Because surely it was the same idea, pushing chakra to your feet or hands?

"Hmm. If you say so, though I think the poor tree would thank you to use a little less chakra next time," the jounin said, like that wasn't completely obvious. Sakura mumbled something vaguely affirmative, some part of her horrified at the disrespectful way she was treating her teacher, but another part shouting, _Don't you think I figured that part out?!_ and waving her mental fist at an image of their teacher.

The next try she used too little chakra, and the time after that almost enough to stick her palm to the wood. On Sakura's fourth try, her palm stuck, but not hard enough for her to pull herself up. Her fifth try had bark sticking to her palm and fingers when she removed her hand from the tree, and Sakura realized that she had to send enough chakra through that it would encompass the entire part of the tree her hand was touching. She wove the chakra further into the wood, then did the same with her other hand.

In ten minutes, Sakura was laboriously pulling herself up the tree crouched over like a frog. With every step pushing against the tree with her feet, but letting her whole actual weight be pulled by her hands. She was making hand- and finger-shaped dents in the wood, but at least she was making progress up the tree.

When she got to the closest branch she could reasonably grab in case she fell, Sakura slowly pooled chakra to her feet, recognizing what sticking properly to the tree should feel like. Righting herself in a slow movement, Sakura continued her upwards trek until she reached the top branches, where she seated herself upside down.

"I can honestly say I've never seen anyone learn tree-climbing like that," Kakashi said, voice easily carrying to her position, even though he didn't seem to have raised it.

Sakura leaned her elbows on her knees, looking down at him. "As they say: 'whatever works', right sensei?"

Kakashi's eye slowly curved into a smile, and Sakura felt that familiar zing of accomplishment rush through her as she bent her knees and let her legs dangle with her toes pointing towards the sky.

–

When the two other members of the team discovered that she'd completed the exercise, they seemed to take that as a reason to get even more motivated. Unfortunately their motivation had been strong enough that they'd worked themselves into exhaustion.

Kakashi had called off training for the day and told them to go home, with the added comment that if the boys didn't manage to learn this within the week off he was so kindly giving them, Sakura would be the only one to get instructions about how to do the next step.

Sakura had to keep herself from glaring at the jounin's back, because that kind of competition would neither promote team spirit nor keep the boys from working themselves into exhaustion for the next few days.

"Neh, Sakura-chan?" Naruto said, the first of him and Sasuke to recover. "How'd you get this exercise so quickly?" The blond didn't sound envious, pure curiosity widening his eyes.

Sakura crossed her legs, raising her eyebrows. "Well, not storming at the tree might have had something to do with it."

Naruto's brows furrowed. "But Kakashi-sensei said -"

Sakura interrupted before he could finish the sentence. "He said that running up the tree would make climbing it easier. Not that it was the one and only way to go about it." She paused for a moment, noticed that they were both listening, and then added, "I have better control of the chakra flow in my hands, like most inexperienced shinobi. Knowing that made trying to stick my hands to the wood seem like a good way to start."

"Stick your hands to the wood?" Naruto asked, looking attentive. Without truly noticing it, Sakura slipped into 'lecture-mood', as Ron had referred to it, as she explained the theory behind her idea. When she was done, both the boys were looking at her with some measure of surprise, and it was only when she recognized that she was feeling indignant at their surprise that Sakura realized that she _did_ still have her pride. Hiding her natural inclination for studying during the course of the Academy apparently hadn't erased a lifetime of being proud to be known as a veritable human encyclopedia.

"Heheh, Sakura-chan, you're really smart!" Naruto grinned at her, and Sakura felt some of her indignation dissolve at the obviously well-meant praise. That the blond still seemed surprised at the fact was something she made herself overlook. She could hardly complain about the boys not noticing something she'd made sure to keep hidden.

"What was your score on the final exam?" Sasuke asked, eyes narrowed. The scores Kakashi had told them was the average of all their test scores put together, and because she'd known the final exam wouldn't count as their one true grade, she'd actually allowed herself to go all out on it.

"Almost perfect," she admitted, because what was the point of hiding it from her team? It was one thing not to stand out in class, but if her teammates took her average scores to heart, they'd treat her accordingly – and Sakura had had enough of that. "So was yours, from what I heard." She tilted her head at the Uchiha, a wry smile on her face. He'd have scored much better than her in the speed and strength trials of the obstacle course her mother had needed to complete, she was sure. But Sakura doubted he'd have scored better than her on the written exam, though how proud she should actually be of that considering her two extra decades worth of experience, she wasn't sure.

At least she could honestly say that most of the material in the Academy had been newer to her than it would have been to him, since Sasuke was – had been - a member of a clan.

"But Kakashi said you were placed 17th in class," Naruto interrupted her train of thought, and Sakura's smile grew even wryer.

"I didn't want to bring attention to myself. But I don't really have any reason not to tell the two of you..." she trailed off, shrugging. Both Sasuke and Naruto stared at her.

"Do you think there may have been other students who shared your opinion on this?" Sasuke's fists were slowly clenching, though he didn't look angry so much as grim.

"Yes. I'm pretty sure Shino's average score was far from his actual abilities, and... well, I know of at least one other who had his own reasons for remaining firmly below the top." Though Shikamaru's reasoning had been less about keeping his skills hidden, and more due to his lack of motivation to work hard. At least that was Sakura's impression.

Sasuke stared at her harder, before an abrupt smirk turned the corners of his lips up. His hands unclenched, and he leaned back. "Hn. Interesting."

It wasn't the reaction she'd been expecting, insofar she'd been expecting any particular reaction at all. Sakura blinked, then slowly smiled back.

When they'd gone their separate ways and she was slowly walking back home, Sakura hoped what she'd told them would change their perception of her. Because she would not, _refused_ to be overlooked.

–

Sakura ran into Naruto on the second day of their vacation week, and he all but barreled into her when he came to greet her. They caught each other before they could trip and fall and Sakura grunted in the grasp of Naruto's arms, surprised at the blond's strength.

"You're going to smother her like that, dead-last," Sasuke's voice spoke up from behind them, and Naruto whirled around too quickly to keep his balance. Sakura was about to fall with him when the lightning-quick realization that she now knew a way to keep standing hit her. Channeling chakra to her legs and feet, she stuck herself to the ground in the same way she's stuck herself to the tree and managed to keep them both from falling.

"Hm. Good save." Sakura threw her dark-haired teammate an exasperated look and that brief flash of surprise she occasionally noticed widened his eyes, before he cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Bastard," Naruto grumbled, and grumbling, Sakura mentally agreed. She righted them both and brushed dust off her pants while Naruto and Sasuke proceeded to get into one of their usual fights. The temptation to throw something at them to break their self-absorbed bickering was briefly stifling, before Sakura smothered that idea in favor of one a little more productive.

She walked away. The barbecue restaurant she'd been heading towards was only a street away, and staying behind to feel excluded was just stupid. She didn't want to resent her teammates – but neither did she want to stand up and scream 'pay attention to me, damnit!' like a five-year-old throwing a tantrum. After their little talk about grades, she'd honestly thought... but it didn't matter. Not if she didn't let it matter. Proving herself to _herself_ had always been more important anyway-

"Wah- hey! Sakura-chan, where are you going?" Sakura turned around at the sound of steps, surprised that the blond boy had actually broken off the argument to follow her. Behind Naruto, she noticed that although Sasuke hadn't joined in the shouting, he was only a few steps behind their teammate, walking at a brisk but more dignified pace.

"I'm heading to BBQ Eki," she said, stopping in place to let the boys catch up.

"Eki? Oh! That place by the Hoku River?" The Northern River was only a river in some of the places it flowed; for the most part it was a stream you could cross in one step.

"Yes." Eki was out of the way, a small restaurant tucked away in an alley whose opening was nearly completely hidden by lush dark green ivy. Sakura hadn't expected either of her teammates to know about it.

"Let's all go together!" Naruto said and then grinned at them like he had trouble figuring out why both Sakura and Sasuke were suddenly staring at him. Though as Sakura turned the idea over in her head, she couldn't really see anything wrong with it. It wasn't like they didn't get along, despite Naruto and Sasuke's spats and the way they at times ignored her in favor of each other.

"Alright," she said slowly, surprised.

"...Fine." Sasuke added a second after her own agreement, and Sakura got the feeling that the Uchiha just hadn't wanted to be the first to accept the invitation, even though he didn't actually object them going to eat together. Though it was hard to tell if her intuition rang true in this case, since Sasuke was wearing his default expression of flat annoyance with the world in general.

Eki's had doors that reminded Sakura of batwing saloon doors from old, barely-remembered western movies she'd seen back in her first childhood. Above the doors was a wooden sign in the shape of a large lizard pouring sake into a cup, shaded by a constellate of ivy sneaking its way down down the lizard's head.

They were greeted by a hostess clad in a simple kimono, whose gaze flickered over them all before she bent forwards in a deep bow. Sakura bowed back, Naruto grinned and greeted her in a very loud voice and Sasuke grunted something under his breath. Oh, well. At least they hadn't ignored her.

"Sakura-san," said Azumi, the corner of her red-painted lips tugging upwards. "How delightful to see you again." She even managed to sound sincere, which Sakura supposed was a needed quality for a job like this.

"Likewise, Azumi-san," she said with a smile of her own, before proceeding to introduce both her teammates. Azumi's smile never wavered, though Sakura thought she spotted flashes of recognition in the woman's eyes at both her teammates' names.

They were showed to a table by a window facing Eki's small garden. The table cloth might have been thin with use, and the wooden chairs a little chipped, but the restaurant was clean and friendly. The reason Sakura had returned to this place time and time again was due to the way it had reminded her of the Burrow that first time.

"She knew you by name, Sakura-chan," Naruto said absently, wholly focused on examining the restaurant with bright eyes and wide turns of his head.

"I like this restaurant. It's tucked away. Quiet." Plus it had barbeque, one of the few foods she recognized from back before this life.

A thin male waiter approached their table, bowed and handed them menus. "Sakura-chan," he murmured in greeting before gliding away.

"I want the kobe beef!" Naruto exclaimed after a few seconds, apparently not concerned with perusing the entire menu.

"The kalbi rib with tomatoes," said Sasuke a moment later, like taking his time with the menu would concede an invisible challenge to Naruto. Sakura mentally added her own order of yakishabu beef with garlic cloves and waved the waiter back to their table.

"Ryo-san, we'd like..." she proceeded to list their orders, added several sauces she liked and then sat back as the boys ordered drinks. Sasuke scoffed at Naruto's order of a particularly sweet soda, while Naruto scoffed right back at Sasuke's order of 'boring old-man tea'. They were apparently perfectly capable of arguing about the smallest of things, and because she traded a glance with Ryo, it was for once actually more amusing than excluding.

Fifteen minutes later Sakura was watching Naruto stuff his face with beef in horrified fascination. She had never known anyone with such atrocious table manners, and that was even if she included Ron.

"...You eat like a vacuum cleaner, dead-last," Sasuke said finally, slowly chewing his own meat with a kind of poise Sakura had only ever seen in purebloods.

"No fighting while we're eating," Sakura said before Naruto could snap back and spray bits of half-chewed meat over the grill where some of her meat was still cooking. "You're shinobi now," she reminded them, feeling particularly Hermioneish when she continued, "And need I remind you that shinobi are considered adults?"

That was policy Sakura definitely didn't agree with, considering the relative maturity of most of the people in her graduation class, but which made Naruto close his mouth and swallow whatever protest he'd been about to make. "Naruto, slow down. The food isn't going to disappear even if you don't shovel it in." With that she handed him a napkin, then returned to take a prim bite of her own meat.

When she looked up again, Sasuke was smirking at her. _With_ her, really. Sakura's lips twitched in response, watching from the corner of her eye how Naruto tried to eat in what he probably considered a more polite way, but which mostly looked like he found the meat difficult to chew. It was actually kind of cute.

"I learned it, by the way." Naruto grinned around a piece of meat, his expression reminding her of Crookshanks when he'd caught a particularly juicy mouse. "The tree-climbing!" he exclaimed when her eyebrows rose in question, before turning to stare at Sasuke. "Take that, bastard!" He pointed his closed chopsticks at the other boy, a triumphant grin on his face.

"I learned it too, idiot. It's not that hard." Sakura bit back a small chuckle at Sasuke's haughty tone, like he hadn't been struggling with the exercise as much as Naruto the last time she'd seen them.

Naruto glared at the Uchiha, puffed his cheeks and then resolutely turned to her. "Sakura-chan, I did it the way you said, and I couldn't really get it to work the way you said it should, but it was still really useful advice! So thank you!" His grin was infectious, and Sakura found herself smiling back, feeling useful and strangely comforted. Giving helpful advice was something she'd always been good at, and to have someone here acknowledge that felt pretty damn good.

"Hn. It was." Sasuke looked acutely uncomfortable, taking a slow sip of tea before elaborating at her questioning look, "It was good advice." He sounded like he had a bone stuck in his throat, but he'd said it. Sakura smiled at him too, because somehow despite his high-brow ways, there was something kind of cute about him too.

"Do you think Oni-sensei is gonna try to kill us again when this week is up?" Naruto asked as they were leaving, fingers braided and cupping the back of his head. Sasuke had been striding ahead a few steps in front of them, perhaps overcome by all the socializing he'd subjected himself to, but slowed down at the question.

"Why? Can't take a few scrapes and cuts?" the Uchiha said, the corner of his lips tilting up in a way Sakura would bet was designed to annoy their teammate.

"Yes, I can!" Naruto's voice was strident and indignant. And loud. Sakura sighed. "I just wondered how much worse it's going to get." Despite the words, he sounded excited rather than apprehensive.

"I guess we'll see, in a week." Sakura had some vague notions that the next step might involve standing on a moving surface, and a mental image of Kakashi making them stand on logs tied between two trees made her rub her temples. Or perhaps smaller surfaces, like a balancing on ropes or small rocks instead of climbing up large trees where you had a lot of surface to work with?

In the corner of her mind, Sakura could admit to herself that she was rather desperately hoping next week wouldn't be as exhausting as this week had been. But she wasn't about to admit that out loud.

* * *

**A/N:** As a thank you for your encouraging reviews, I made this chapter a little longer than usual. You guys rock!**  
**

So, what did you think of my take on the tree-climbing exercise? Sakura's pride rearing its head? The little team-bonding here at the end? The chapter in general?

(HP/Naruto pet peeve of the week: I don't understand why so many crossover fics have the shinobi going 'Why are they all wearing dresses? *gape&giggle*' at the wizards' robes, _when there's a freaking evil organization wearing black robes with little red clouds on them running around_. And when their own traditional clothing is a freaking _kimono_, which looks more like a dress than robes do! Not hating on the kimono though, just sayin'.)

And finally, for those of you who were wondering: the seal-system mentioned in chapter one was not intended to be a copy of the canon Naruto elements used for jutsu, because Fuuinjutsu as I imagine it isn't based on the same kind of system as the 'handseal-techniques' are.


	4. Troublesome Thoughts

**Effloresco Secundus**

_Chapter 3: Troublesome Thoughts_

* * *

Early Friday afternoon, Sakura started towards the For Every Occasion shinobi shop to restock her small supply of food pills. The few she were in possession of had never been necessary during her Academy days, and Kakashi didn't allow them for practice no matter how tired they got. But since the team was bound to get missions where a portable energy boost would become necessary sooner or later, Sakura figured she'd buy some well before they actually did were sent on that kind of mission.

The shop was lined with shelves containing rolls of bandage, replacement vests, various kinds of food pills, panchrest pills, razor strops, honing steels, whetstones in various shapes and sizes, and a large assortment of generic kunai and shuriken. Explosive tags were kept behind the counter, behind the glass doors of a particularly sturdy-looking shelf.

Sakura had been here before, of course, but only a few times. Looking around the shop she spotted a handful of shinobi perusing the shelves, all looking like they knew exactly where to find what they were looking for. She headed towards the shelf with rows of pills in small boxes, took one look at the first box in the row, and frowned.

"Sakura?" a voice spoke up, and Sakura turned around to find Shikamaru with a roll of bandage in one hand and a vial in his left. "Need help?" he asked, slowly rubbing the back of his neck and looking like he'd just been woken up. He probably had, considering how much and how often he slept.

Sakura gave him a half-smile. "I was looking for food pills, but I wasn't sure which grade would fit..." she trailed off, annoyed with herself. She'd known that food pills differed depending on how much chakra you had to replenish, but hadn't thought to check up exactly what the numbers on the boxes meant.

"Hmm." Shikamaru leaned over her shoulder, blinked at the small boxes, then picked up one marked with '0.4'. "You had pretty low chakra, right?" When Sakura nodded, the Nara heir continued, "This should do. Probably. You could do the Basic Three without getting tired?"

Sakura nodded again. The Three didn't take much chakra at all, and Sakura did know how to avoid chakra spill when she performed them. Had some of the other graduates actually exhausted themselves performing just those three techniques?

"There were Academy students with lower chakra levels than you, you know," Shikamaru said, yawning. For a brief moment, Sakura wondered if she'd said what she'd thought out loud, before she caught sight of Shikamaru's eyes. Even half-lidded, they were piercing, and Sakura reminded herself yet again never to underestimate the lazy Nara.

Sakura smiled at him, just a tad wry. "Alright. Thank you for the help." It wasn't like she was unused to geniuses not acting like they were intelligent. Professor Dumbledore came immediately to mind, as did Kakashi. They barely acted like they were in possession of common sense most times, and that kind of subterfuge was useful.

Shikamaru shrugged indolently. "S'okay," He yawned again. "It was not very troublesome." He observed her from the corner of his eye. "There are all-purpose pills around too, you know. You don't have to look for the grade that fits you perfectly."

"I know," she said without elaborating, and Shikamaru looked at her for a moment longer before shrugging again. Sakura had managed her perfectionist tendencies a lot better in this life than she had as Hermione, but that didn't mean they were all gone. And since she had the opportunity to choose between pills that suited her perfectly or pills that suited her only tolerably, why wouldn't she prefer the former?

Shikamaru walked with her to the counter with the roll of bandage still held loosely in his hand. "So how's the team?" They ended up in line behind a long-haired jounin who appeared to be haggling with the bored-looking chunin cashier.

"Pretty good actually." She smiled a little to herself, the image of her and the boys' dinner together appearing briefly in her mind like a warm breeze. The corner of Shikamaru's mouth lifted.

"Naruto and the Uchiha not too troublesome, then?"

Sakura wryly explained the constant arguments, the team exercises and their oddball teacher. She and Shikamaru weren't close enough to be friends, but talking to him like this felt surprisingly comfortable. Maybe it was because despite the laziness and the drawled comments, the Nara had always felt just a bit older than the rest of her classmates. The light of naivete was missing from his eyes.

Trailing off, Sakura glanced at him. "What about your team?"

Shikamaru groaned. "Ino's the most troublesome female I've ever met. More troublesome than my mother, and I didn't think that was possible." He sighed, an annoyed furrow appearing between his slim brows.

Sakura wasn't sure if Shikamaru's occasional comment on women were actually a sign of genuine prejudice, or if it was something that he'd decided to spout to gauge reactions. The only reason why she hadn't called him on it was because she had a very difficult time imagining that a boy as smart as Shikamaru could honestly have that kind of prejudice.

'A boy shouldn't let himself be beaten by a girl', he'd once drawled to one of the girls in class, but he never seemed even a little upset when he _was_ beaten by a girl during sparring – and Sakura was sure that for all that Shikamaru never tried his hardest, he wasn't actually hiding a genius-level Taijutsu ability that could easily beat any of the Taijutsu-accomplished girls and only alright with being defeated because he knew he would have won if he'd tried. And he never seemed to underestimate female opponents, shrug off accomplishments by historical female shinobi, or dismiss female classmates' opinions. Not that he participated in class discussions very often, but still...

Sakura did hope that his prejudice was just lip service, because if he did have some internalized bias, he probably wouldn't last long against the first female enemy shinobi to challenge him. Underestimating opponents did tend to come back to bite you – Voldemort was a perfect example of that.

"And since your male teammate is Chouji, I suppose at least he is 'untroublesome'?" she asked lightly. Occasionally she got the feeling that Shikamaru was testing her specifically, though she couldn't imagine for what reason.

Shikamaru threw her a wry glance, before nodding. "Yeah, Chouji's Chouji. Asuma-sensei's pretty cool too. Got him to play shougi with me." He smiled a slow, satisfied smile.

Sakura's smile was smaller, but sharp. "And now you beat him across the board on a regular basis?" She's lowered her lashes to cover their glitter of calculation, but she didn't miss Shikamaru's look, or the slight ripple of tension in his thin shoulders. Shikamaru wasn't the only one who could and would test people, though admittedly Sakura just wanted to shake him up a little. Even though she'd decided not to act on the urge, those stupid comments of his were irritating.

"Are you paying for that or what?" The chunin cashier interrupted, rhythmically tapping her blunted nails on the cash register. Sakura plastered an apologetic smile over her lips and got a snort in return. As she paid, Sakura could feel Shikamaru's eyes still on her, and her mind turned back to it's previous track. He couldn't honestly have been under the impression that nobody would notice that he was a lot more intelligent than he acted? Sakura frowned to herself. Or maybe he'd thought only the teachers would be observant enough to catch on?

They made their way out in silence, but when the shop's door swung shut behind them, Shikamaru pushed his hands into his trouser-pockets and threw her a slanted look.

"Mm, you know, there's something about you..." he said, slowly rolling his shoulders, and moving his gaze from her face to the sky. If he'd been a little older, Sakura might have thought he was trying to hit on her, but as it was, she just tried not to tense. With that comment, the game abruptly turned sour. "Not sure what it is, really." He was squinting up at the sun, but Sakura wouldn't put it past the Nara to be observing her from the corner of his eye. In a flash of memory, she was reminded of Professor Snape's dark, ever-watching eyes. The Nara's eyes lacked the Potion's Master's hardness and hostility, though Sakura wasn't sure if that made them any less deep-seeing.

"I would have thought nosiness would be too troublesome for you," she said lightly instead, sliding the box of food pills into her kunai pouch just to give herself something to do.

"You do realize you just implied that there _is_ something worth being nosy about?" Shikamaru said in a drawl, and Sakura was thankful her bangs hid her eyes when her head was turned towards the kunai pouch, because otherwise he would have caught the flinch in her expression. Damn it, but the boy really was too smart for her peace of mind.

"As if you didn't already know that," Sakura said to cover for herself, and when she looked up at him, her expression was one of light exasperation. Like she was a second away from rolling her eyes at him, rather than fabricating an excuse to get away. She cocked an eyebrow at him and added, "I thought you found mysteries too troublesome to bother with?"

Shikamaru scratched absently at his arm, then shrugged. "I do, so no worries."

The wry smile he tacked onto the end of that sentence wasn't very reassuring, and when they went their separate ways a few streets later Sakura resolved to watch herself with even more care than before. As the Nara ambled around a corner, the previously distant realization that Shikamaru wasn't the only one observant enough to start forming theories about her grew to a heavy pressure in her chest. Because whatever theories people came up with, Sakura was sure it wouldn't lead to anything good for her.

–

The next week had them all standing on top of a pool of water in one of the other training grounds, which definitely hadn't been anywhere close to what Sakura had suspected would be the next step in their training. All of them except for Kakashi were soaking wet. Their teacher was grinning. Sasuke and Naruto were fuming. And Sakura was contemplating what hexes she'd have liked to send in their teacher's direction, had she still been Hermione and in possession of a wand.

"Up and at it, kiddos," the jounin said brightly, and though Sakura was fairly sure her own expression matched Sasuke's deep scowl, she stepped onto the pond's surface again. She'd gone as slowly with this exercise as she had with the tree-climbing, using her palms to measure the chakra output. It hadn't really helped much this time though, because the weight of her body on the water surface was enough to shift it under her feet and cause her to fall in.

She spotted Sasuke having similar problems, and Naruto as well – before the blond had decided to abandon the careful route and go for a more dynamic one. Which involved a lot of splashing, and didn't really help him progress any faster.

_Is this a matter of surface tension?_ Sakura thought, wiping dripping locks of hair from her forehead with an annoyed movement. _Surface tension is due to the cohesion of molecules, and because they are polar, water molecules attract each other - which creates a filmy layer over the surface._ Sakura's eyebrows drew together. _A filmy layer..._ Was that what they were supposed to do? Try to enforce the natural surface tension with chakra?

A second later, Naruto fell in, splashing both her and Sasuke. Sakura pinched the bridge of her nose and tried not to pay attention to the way Kakashi was chuckling at them. _Think, damn you, think. Gravity pulls the layer downwards, the water molecules beneath pulls at the molecules above... _No, she was heading down the wrong path. This wasn't about gravity, or manipulating individual molecules. Sakura wasn't sure if the latter was even possible, and even if it was, she doubted genin were expected to learn something that difficult. This wasn't a manipulation of the water, but rather a manipulation of her own chakra -

"Ne, Sakura-chan," Naruto said from where he was crawling up on her side of the pond, blond hair plastered over his cheeks. "Have you gotten anywhere?" He plopped down beside her, blinked and then pulled a frog from under his shirt. Sakura smiled at the careful way he put the small amphibian back into the water, rubbing water out of her eyes and trying to ignore the way her wet clothes clung to her skin.

"I thought it might have something to do with the surface tension," she explained, testing the water again with her foot. The chakra output made a small amount of water cling like a sheet to her soles.

"How so?" Sasuke said, having walked around the pond and towards them. Sakura looked at him with surprise, unused to him asking outright questions. After their dinner together, he'd been even more standoffish than usual for a few days, until Naruto had yelled at him for 'acting like a stuck-up dick' (Sakura had valiantly not said anything about a dick that stuck up being an erection) and the boys had fought the tension out. For that easy solution to the tension, Sakura was grateful - even if she wished that _she_ could have done something to help Naruto snap Sasuke out of it.

Because if Sakura wasn't completely deluding herself, the Uchiha was slightly more social now than he'd been before their week off. Maybe. And she wanted in on that, wanted to be helping it along as much as Naruto (inadvertently) did.

Sakura explained her theorizing, hoping it didn't sound too vague or went too far about the boys' (especially Naruto's) head. The blond did indeed look confused, but Sasuke was nodding thoughtfully, arms crossed over his chest.

"That's a reasonable theory," he said, and if it sounded like he was granting her a favor with his agreement, Sakura could ignore it this once. It was progress, at least.

"Uh, I don't really get it..." said Naruto, and when Sasuke's lips twisted in a sneer, Sakura shot him a warning glance. The dark-haired boy blinked, then gave her a glare. Having been stared down by various Death Eaters, cannibalistic werewolves and furious centaurs, Sakura wasn't all that impressed.

When it looked like Sasuke was about to make some comment that would no doubt start another fight, Sakura hastened to speak, "It basically means that standing on the water surface might require us to manipulate the same 'force' that allows a leaf to float on the surface." She'd mostly dismissed that theory, but since it was causing a group discussion, Sakura was loathe to say that.

Naruto nodded uncertainly, and Sakura held back a sigh at the expression.

"How did you even learn the Basic Three, dead-last?" Sasuke asked, and though his tone was spiteful, that was a good question. Or it would be, if Naruto didn't jump their teammate in protest.

Fortunately, he just shot Sasuke an annoyed look. "I don't need to know all that fiddly stuff to get how stuff works when I see it!"

That actually made sense. Whenever Kakashi explained something (though their teacher taking the time to thoroughly explain things wasn't all that common an occurrence), Naruto would often wear a confused little frown... right up until he was shown an actual demonstration.

Hm. Sakura had never considered the implications of that before, not in detail. She was reminded of her boys, and the way both (but especially Harry) could perform feats of magic they'd seen sooner than magic they'd had explained to them. Maybe it was intuition. Like a musician playing musical pieces by ear. Just because the musician couldn't read sheet music, that didn't make him less of a musician, did it?

Still, Sakura was Hermione, and knowledge was not to be disregarded under her watch. _An investment in knowledge pays the best interest_, Benjamin Franklin had once said, and Sakura agreed with that reasoning. As a shinobi (or a witch at war), knowledge was even more imperative. "But 'all that fiddly stuff' gives you a more thorough foundation to work with."

Naruto threw up his hands, huffing. "Fine! If you think it's that important that I know about the water's floating force or whatever, I can learn it _after_ we're done with this!"

Sasuke snorted and Sakura had to smother her own sound of amusement. '_Water's floating force'_? "Alright, fair enough." It wasn't like they could interrupt the exercise to go to the library anyway.

"Then let's do this!" Naruto raised a fist to the air and then promptly tripped backwards into the pond again. The cascade of water that hit both Sakura and Sasuke was cause for yet another spat between the two boys, as Sakura ineffectually tried to wring the water from her hair while resisting the impulse to shove the Uchiha into the pond as well and then stomp off in a huff.

–

None of them had completed the water walking exercise within the week, though they'd all made progress. Mid-week, Sakura could stand on the shallowest part of the pond for a full minute, and two days later, so could Sasuke. Naruto was having more trouble, and from Kakashi's repeated insistence that he should use less chakra, Sakura was starting to suspect that her blond teammate had a lot more raw power than she and Sasuke did.

From the way Sasuke _didn't_ rib Naruto about being unable to catch up to him, Sakura wondered if the Uchiha hadn't started thinking in similar lines. Sakura knew the dark-haired boy had a lot more power than she did, but she wasn't as far below him power-wise as she'd once been.

When she'd first started at the Academy, the teachers had praised her control, but made carefully worded comments about the very low levels of her chakra. So of course Sakura had immediately done her very best to rectify that, even if that meant her near-perfect chakra control had at first suffered a bit from it. She still didn't have much raw power, but what she now had wasn't below average for her age group. And her control was pretty damn good, especially when it came to not wasting chakra when performing jutsu.

Leaning back in her chair, Sakura put her pen to the side and stretched her arms above her head. This morning she and the boys gathered at the training ground only for an unknown shinobi with a senbon stuck between his teeth to show up, hand them a note covered with their teacher's atrocious handwriting informing them that sadly, he had other business to attend to and that they had the day off.

After accusing the unknown shinobi of being an impostor, being Kakashi in disguise trying to get out of teaching them and various other, less credible things courtesy of a loud and annoyed Naruto, they'd all split ways. Well, once the unknown shinobi had rolled his eyes and gone 'poof' on them. Sakura had headed home with the intent to continue the hobby she'd taken up a few months into her first year in this life, and that she'd cultivated ever since.

Several of the large drawers in the dresser next to her bed contained nothing but sheaves of papers, each pile neatly tied together with silk bands.

Sakura glanced down at the many discarded papers in the wastebasket underneath her desk, rubbing the stiffness out of her hand. She'd spent the past several hours trying to translate Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and only now did she have a version that retained the original's pleasant rhythm and vaguely melancholy feel.

It wasn't that she was extraordinarily fond of old English poems, or even that she was much of a poet herself. What Sakura was, was home-sick. Or, at least, that's what had made her pick this hobby up in the first place. Writing down stories she'd remembered reading as Hermione, at least the ones she'd read often enough to have all but memorized, and later trying to (not very successfully) transcribe movies she'd watched and loved, and then moving onto poems, to texts on magical theory... because there was something utterly terrifying in the thought of forgetting all these things she'd adored, forgetting Hermione's first and great loves and replacing them with what she'd learned to love as Sakura.

That had been the start, at least. Now, with her archive of texts both translated and written in English, she'd slowed down enough that this had become a hobby to enjoy rather than a personal mission. She didn't cry with the loss of her past home over the papers these days.

There was a knock on the door, and then her mother's voice called out, "Sakura?"

"Come in," Sakura said, turning in the chair and rubbing the back of her neck. Sayuri stepped into the room, clothes dusty and with a cloth headband wrapped around her forehead. The tools in her belt looked like they'd gotten a good work-out today. "What are you doing home so early?"

Sayuri wiped her hands on a small towel and smiled. "I could ask the same of you." Sakura explained, and her mother nodded thoughtfully. "Sounds like your sensei's got a mission," she commented, leaning on the door jamb. Sakura murmured something vaguely agreeing, putting away her pens and the high-quality ink she used for final versions of poems.

"Writing poems again?" Sayuri was under the impression that Sakura loved writing, and had spent years teasing her that she should be an 'author-ninja'.

"Just the one poem today. Couldn't get it quite right until now." She held up the finished work for her mother's perusal, as usual having to smother the guilt at taking credit for masterpieces not of her own doing. Sakura had always loved the sense of accomplishment that came with excelling in something and being acknowledged for it, but never for things she hadn't actually done. Gryffindor righteousness and all that, she supposed.

Sayuri shook her head, smiling softly. "This is beautiful. I don't understand where you get your way with words - the gods know it's not from me or your father..." Sakura tried not to let her smile slip even a little at her mother's admiring tone.

Sayuri shook her head again, handing back the paper. "But you've been sitting here for much too long, I bet. I'm on my lunch break, so lets head out to the yard and have a bite, eh?"

Sakura nodded, following her mother out of her room and into the yard, shielding her eyes against the bright sunlight. "How are those teammates of yours?" Sayuri threw over her shoulder, taking large strides to get to the patch of fluffy green grass at one end of the small backyard. She dropped ungracefully down in the grass and Sakura sank down next to her, folding her legs in a smooth movement.

"Ever arguing about everything."

Sayuri had turned her face towards the sun, but Sakura caught the slight tug on the corner of her mouth. "When you're not bothering with trying to keep them in line?" It was phrased as a question, but sounded like a statement. Sakura snorted.

"They do listen, sometimes. Surprisingly." Usually when they were under the impression that the other boy had already listened and complied.

"Eh, you'll have them whipped in no time," Sayuri said, opening a sandwich wrapped in plastic with her teeth and somehow managing to make that comment sound suggestive even while doing so. Sakura flushed, swiping the sandwich from her mother's hand. Sayuri winked at her, then plastered an innocent expression on her broad face. "I just meant, they'll grow up soon enough."

Sakura nodded. She didn't expect or want the boys to be _obedient_, because she was well aware of her tendency to boss people around if that trait of hers was indulged too much, but she did wish they'd grow up a little faster, at least. Right now, they were so... so very twelve years old. And she was so very not.

"You grew up so quickly after your father's death, Sakura," Sayuri said, a musing note in her voice. "It's like one day you were my baby girl and the next you were a miniature adult." Of course her mother didn't actually mean that, but every time Sayuri made similar remarks Sakura's heart skipped a beat.

She tugged a lock of hair behind her ear, staring avidly down at her knees. There was something in her that said _If she sees your expression right now, she'll realize the truth_, and so Sakura tilted her face downwards. If only Sayuri knew how close she was to the truth Sakura had kept hidden for so many years.

"Well, I suppose death in the family does make children older." Sayuri sighed, rubbing her neck.

"Or just colder," Sakura said quietly, thoughts turning towards her dark-haired teammate and his thin smirks and (slowly defrosting) cold glares. She wasn't sure she'd say losing his family had _aged_ Sasuke, but it had certainly frozen something inside him.

Sakura felt her mother turn her head, felt Sayuri's eyes on her. "That too."

They didn't speak much more after that.

* * *

**A/N: **I'm now working full-time, which sadly means less time for writing. I've also had some health issues, so I'm not sure how well the editing went. Might come back and correct stuff later.

On this chapter: I confess I love fiddly little details both in stories I read and stories I write, so I had fun with the For Every Occasion shop. It'll probably show up again sometime.

I cannot make myself believe that Shikamaru would honestly be prejudiced against women. He's too smart for that kind of idiocy. Maybe if it'd been Kiba I could have believed it, but Shikamaru? No.

I always did find it odd that in fics where a person from the real world/HP world/whatever world ends up/is reborn in the Naruto world, they almost never use or ponder the RL knowledge/things they loved. Like it ceases to matter. Thus homesick!Sakura using that large brain of hers to jot down stuff she memorized as Hermione. But I promise ES won't suddenly become a songfic, or any kind of fic where long bits of whatever are quoted in the middle of the chapter and ruins the flow of the story.

What did you think of the chapter? Of my Shikamaru? Of the team's water-walking? Of Sakura's talk with her mother, and her writing/transcribing hobby? Spot any mistakes? Do tell!


	5. Our Crosses to Bear

**Effloresco Secundus**

_Chapter 4: Our Crosses to Bear_

* * *

"Argh, where is that stupid Oni-sensei?" Naruto suddenly shouted, throwing a frustrated glare at the water and then stomping off to the side. It'd been three days since the senbon-chewing shinobi handed them the note, and they'd all been getting a bit antsy, if for different reasons. Sakura couldn't really help worrying about Kakashi, as irritating as he could be, ever since her mother had brought up the idea that he'd been called away for a mission. If the mission was only supposed to take a day, but Kakashi had been gone for three days, surely something had gone wrong?

Last night had been fraught with nightmares, old images of the war playing themselves out like a movie: a flash of the broken bodies at the conclusion of the Battle of Hogwarts, the ruins of Downing Street two years later, her first father's unseeing eyes set in a cold, pale face... her second father's unseeing eyes, also set in a cold, pale face.

Sakura couldn't even pinpoint exactly why Kakashi's sudden disappearance was hitting her so hard – she didn't care so much for the jounin that her sleep should be wrought with these particular nightmares. _Flashbacks_, really. Though Sakura didn't like to think of them as such, if only because she knew very well that flashbacks could be a real hindrance, or even a danger, if left unattended to. Especially during a mission.

Naruto mostly seemed annoyed rather than concerned about the jounin's lengthening disappearance. Sakura pondered bringing up the suggestion that Kakashi might be on a mission rather than just terribly late to spite them, but it wasn't like having the rest of the team worried would bring the jounin back any faster.

"Why Naruto, I'm right here." Sakura jumped, tripping into the pond and Naruto fell backwards in with her a fraction of a second later. Sasuke only twitched a little and remained perfectly dry, but then again he hadn't been standing on or in the pond. "If by 'Oni-sensei', you were actually referring to your kind and cheerful teacher?" Kakashi grinned and Sakura was pretty sure all that all three of them were for once wearing identical scows.

"You're late!" Naruto shouted, jumping up to point at the man. The movement caused a cascade of water droplets to hit the ground around him... and Sasuke. Sakura felt vaguely vindicated, even though the Uchiha wasn't the reason she was wet.

Kakashi looked briefly mournful, nodding sadly. "There was an old lady whose house burned down, and I had to help her put it out, but I couldn't find any water -"

Naruto made a sound like an angry water buffalo. "You're a freaking shinobi! You could have used a jutsu!"

"- and then a princess was kidnapped by an evil yakuza -" Kakashi continued like he hadn't caught the interruption.

"You're a jounin! You could probably take down a yakuza with your eyes closed! You just felt like being late!"

"Ah, you wound me with your lack of faith," Kakashi said with an air that made Sakura think the man was actually pouting, or at least projecting a pouty feeling, and that made her want to throw something at his head. To think that she'd actually been _worried_ about him. The unease in her stomach was slowly dissolving, and Sakura hoped the memories that feeling had brought with it would fade with the unease.

"Kakashi, are you actually here for any useful reason?" Sasuke asked, and for once Sakura didn't even react to the lack of a respectful suffix. Naruto also had a tendency to forget suffixes, but when the blond did, it wasn't intentionally rude. Sasuke definitely was.

"Of course I am." The jounin's tone said he was offended, and Sakura believed that about as much as she believed his pouting. Kakashi suddenly clapped his hands together, beamed at them in his customary display of sudden mood-switches, and then said, "I think it's about time we get you your dogtags!"

Naruto's angry expression stilled, like it'd been paused by the jounin's words, and Sasuke's scowl relaxed. Sakura's stomach, on the other hand, tied itself back into knots. Dogtags... what shinobi didn't know the reason for those? Well, besides Naruto.

"Now?" she asked, drawing closer to where their teacher stood well out of water-splashing distance. "I was under the impression shinobi weren't supposed to buy dogtags until they become chunin?"

Naruto stared at her for a moment, then grinned widely. "Heh, it's probably because we're so awesome!" Sakura smiled weakly at him. The last time dogtags had been regularly issued to new genin was during the war.

"Don't look so worried, Sakura-chan," Kakashi said, ruffling her hair. She looked up at him, surprised to have missed his approach, only to see the jounin's eye curved into the crescent shape that meant he was smiling. "You won't be the only genin team with dogtags. They're required to take high C-class missions."

"Ehh? We're getting a C-class mission, sensei?" Naruto looked like Christmas had come early. "What are we gonna do? Rescue a princess? Save a country?"

"Saving a country would be an S-class mission, idiot," Sasuke commented, having drawn closer to the rest of the team.

"Sasuke is right! No princess- or world-saving for genin, I'm afraid." Kakashi clapped his hands together again. "But you know what they say, better safe than sorry!"

Sakura didn't know if it was due to Kakashi's happy grin or her own instincts from the war, but something told her that 'better safe than sorry' had nothing to do with why they were suddenly going to get their dogtags.

"Where do we get these dogtags?" Sasuke asked, looking intrigued. Sakura couldn't imagine why. Naruto was the one who seemed to view shinobi life like a movie-style adventure, but Sasuke had come off as having a more realistic view on what it actually meant to be shinobi. Though on the other hand, he was blatantly eager to prove himself in all things fighting-related, so perhaps that had something to do with his intrigue. Maybe he thought it meant he was moving ahead.

"Smithy, of course."

Sakura mentally shook her thoughts away. She trailed after the once again bickering boys following Kakashi away from the field, hoping in a vague sort of way that the jounin's reason for getting them dogtags wouldn't tear away her teammates admiration for the shinobi occupation. (And in some deep, dark corner of her mind, hoping that the stupid admiration for the bloody road they'd all chosen _would_ get torn to shreds and that getting a good dose of reality thrown in their faces would age them. Because then she wouldn't have to feel like she was all alo-)

"Sakura-chan, hurry up!" Naruto was cupping his hands around his mouth – completely unnecessarily, as his voice was probably loud enough to carry to the next street over. Sakura hadn't realized she'd fallen behind, and had only vaguely noticed that they'd entered one of the streets in the Cedar Square, Konoha's market district.

It wasn't very busy this early, so she'd only had to dodge around the occasional person, but that she'd actually managed to do that purely by reflex spoke pretty well of the reflexes in question. That, or it spoke badly of her absentmindedness.

"You were walking as slow as a snail, Sakura-chan," Naruto said when she came closer, bouncing on his heels a little. The sunlight brightened his blond hair into a golden color, as loud as the orange he wore, and Sakura tried for another smile.

"Sorry, just lost in thought."

"Let's continue," Sasuke interrupted, obviously impatient as well, if slightly more subtle about his impatience than Naruto.

"The smithy is right down here," Kakashi spoke up from where he was leaning against the paint-chipped wall of a house next to the mouth of a wide, sloping alley. "The Brook of Spikes." He stuck a thumb at the alley, and like that had been a signal, the boys were suddenly racing down the alley. Though Sasuke probably wouldn't admit to racing - he'd probably say he just wanted to get there before the 'dead-last' managed to break something in the shop and get them thrown out.

Sakura had to contain a snort at the thought, because sometimes the fact that the boys were twelve wasn't just a source of aggravation. As she was following their race with her eyes, it took her a few seconds to notice Kakashi's quiet stare. She blinked."...Kakashi-sensei?"

"Is something the matter, Sakura?" he said, slowly unfolding his arms and pushing his lanky body away from the wall. Sakura blinked at him, surprised at his straightforwardness. Their teacher wasn't straightforward very often.

Sakura blinked again, then held back a wry smile. She shouldn't be underestimating a jounin's perceptiveness. "The dogtags..." She paused, eyes flickering down to the ground. She fiercely suppressed the images that wanted to appear in her mind. "They were only given to newly minted genin during wartime..." She swallowed before her breath could hitch. (In the very back of her mind, a small voice mouthed: _Oh god, Merlin, anyone, I didn't want to go to war again-_)

Kakashi cocked his head at her, dark eye unreadable. "The reports from the Academy did say that you were very well-read," he said in a drawn-out, musing tone of voice. "I see they weren't wrong." Like he hadn't already known that.

"It's not-" Sakura paused, realized she hadn't meant to speak, and took a breath. It wasn't like she'd be _revealing_ anything by saying this, not really. "It's not 'cool' being a shinobi. This occupation isn't..."

Kakashi slowly nodded, still looking at her in that inscrutable way. "No, it isn't."

Gesturing helplessly toward the alley, where Naruto's and Sasuke's voices were fading, Sakura said, "They think it is. They think... adventure. Excitement."

It wasn't like she was unaware of the reputation shinobi had, both in and out of the hidden villages. Outside the villages, they were like spooky urban myths, only true. Inside of the villages, they were heroes. Children on the streets of Konoha didn't play 'cops and robbers', they played 'shinobi versus samurai'. Even the civilian children. Sakura had watched a group of them play once, watched the way they'd pretend to stab each other, choke each other, act like they were dying... and she'd teared up at the sight, occasionally. Before she learned to ignore it.

Now, in this moment, she was horrified to feel herself tear up again. It hurt, how much she missed Harry and Ron sometimes. She'd wake up at night, still, after all this time, and in the moment between sleep and wakefulness think they were slumbering away in the other bunk-beds in their tent. And then she'd remember that her boys didn't exist in this world.

And now she was starting to care about Naruto and Sasuke, who with their current mindsets would only succeed in getting themselves killed if they faced an actual enemy. She'd _lose_ them.

"You're afraid for them," Kakashi said, sounding thoughtful. Sakura huffed out a breath that was almost a sob, because _bloody hell_ was she afraid. She hadn't even noticed them nestling deeply enough into her heart for this kind of fear on their behalf, hadn't expected that to happen for quite some time yet.

"They're stupid!" exploded out of her mouth without her meaning to say it, and then a sudden flood of words: "It's not a game, it's not, and they don't _see_ that. They don't see that if they 'lose', they die, and _I don't know what to do about it_. They're not going to get it, not if all the lectures Iruka-sensei gave us on the harsher realities of this occupation didn't stick, not until they've seen it and heard it and smelt it - and learning it like that might _kill_ them."

A large hand landed on her head, ruffling her hair.

"Maa, you're a good teammate," Kakashi said, and Sakura blinked up at him, feeling the rest of her choppy tirade drain away at the interruption. "Sakura, not everyone at your age will understand shinobi life as well as you seem to." He paused, smiling gently for a moment. There was a thread of some quiet sadness in that smile. "And you're right, it's dangerous to accept a mission without any real understanding of what the consequences of that mission might be." He bent down to look her straight in the eyes, expression as serious as she'd ever seen him. The shift in atmosphere from his normal demeanor was almost jarring. Then his eye curved and crinkled, like his smile was deepening. "But Sakura, I don't let my comrades die."

He said it like a rock-solid promise, and in that moment (even though she knew all her doubts and fears would creep back in soon enough) she believed him utterly.

He ruffled her hair again, and the moment was broken. "Let's catch up to the knuckleheads before Naruto decides to shout for us, shall we? Not need to disturb everyone in the neighborhood by inflicting Naruto's dulcet tones on them this early."

Sakura bit her lip, then smiled a little. "He'd make for a good alarm clock." She rubbed her eyes discreetly, and they came away only a little moist. He hadn't said it in so many words, but whatever those dogtags were for, war wasn't it. If she was reading him correctly.

Kakashi shrugged languidly. "I don't know about that; my alarm clocks have a tendency to break..." Sakura smiled a little at that, weirdly thankful for her teacher's circumspect way of cheering her up. Maybe he wasn't just a perpetually late, perverted space-case of a jounin.

He led her down the alley and to a narrow metal door with _The Brook of Spikes_ curling in an arch above it. The letters were bronze, or maybe just rusty, and were cut to resemble calligraphy. Kakashi headed in, kicking the door with his heel to keep it open for her to slip through as well.

"There you are! You took forever," Naruto called from where he was leaning over the glass counter opposite a burly man with a shaved head. "Sakura-chan, you didn't catch Kakashi's lateness, did you?" the blond continued when she and their teacher moved closer, and Kakashi bopped him on the head with a fist.

"So this is your other teammate," the man opposite Naruto said, watching her with deep brown eyes. Sakura bowed in greeting, and he dipped his head in return, still studying her. "Haruno Sakura-san, was it?"

Naruto nodded energetically and then gestured to their teacher. "And this is Kakashi-sensei!"

The shopkeeper threw Naruto a dry look that the blond seemed to miss entirely. "You don't say." He nodded to Kakashi, obviously acquainted with the man, but Naruto missed that little exchange as well. His focus had turned to the chains laid out on the counter, and Sakura took a step closer.

"Can you believe Michi-ojisan made these?" Naruto held up a delicate pale silver chain towards her, and Sakura took it with focused eyes. This was beautiful work. They'd done some metal-crafting in Transfiguration, but she'd never managed this level of delicacy. And she'd manage even less without magic.

"Is this silver?" she asked, noticing the off-sheen to the metal. Silver was used in a lot of different potions, and she knew the look of it intimately – mostly because accidentally using the wrong metal in pretty much any potion usually resulted in a melted cauldron, as Neville had proven several times. In a row.

"No, it's an alloy," Michi answered, square chin in his palm and elbow on the counter. "Silver is both too expensive and too weak a metal to use for shinobi business."

Sakura nodded, putting the chain back down. Next to it lay a darker one, with larger links, and she picked that chain up instead. It felt more solid in her hand, less like it'd break if someone tried to pull it off her neck. Sakura cocked her head. If she remembered correctly, the one time she'd seen Kakashi's chain, it'd been thicker than both of these.

"Ah, Michi-san, the tags..?" Kakashi asked, leaning on the counter. The large blacksmith nodded and pulled out a drawer to his right, fishing up a small box. He flicked a finger at it, and it slid across the counter, stopping in front of the jounin.

"This looks to be in order," Kakashi said, peering down into the box. Naruto bounced over to him.

"They're kind of small..." the blond said, and Sakura heard the frown in his voice. Of course, Naruto would want something more attention-grabbing.

Kakashi chuckled quietly. "Maa, hasn't anyone ever told you that it's not about the size, but what you do with it?"

Naruto stared at him blankly, and Sakura resisted the urge to yell at the man. He'd been helpful with calming her down, so he deserved a reprieve. A short one, anyway. "But I already know what I'm going to do with it. Hang it around my neck." He held up one of the tags, and Sakura realized why Naruto had reacted: the tag couldn't be longer than half her little finger. Even the military tags back in her old world had been bigger than that. And so had Kakashi's.

Kakashi sighed. "Kids these days..."

Before the jounin got into his head to explain the innuendo, Sakura asked, "So all we need is to write our registration numbers on these?"

Michi leaned forward. "Nah, I've had the numbers printed already. On the backside of that, Naruto-san," he said when Naruto opened his mouth, probably to voice his confusion at the blank plate of metal.

The blond flipped the tag, then frowned. "But 012606 isn't my number..."

"It's _my_ number, idiot." Sasuke appeared from between the shelves further inside the shop, carrying a set of kunai in one hand. "You obviously picked up the wrong tag." Before Naruto could start in on him, Sasuke turned to Michi. "These." He placed the set of kunai on the counter.

Sakura picked up another of the tags, squinting at the barely visible series of numbers. "I guess this must be yours, then? 012607?"

"Oh yeah, that's mine!" Sakura handed it to him and picked up the last tag, with 012601 printed on it - her number.

They spent a few minutes choosing chains, with Sakura deciding on the darker one she was still holding. Naruto had to be convinced that he couldn't have a gold or orange chain, and with some muttering, he chose a slightly thicker version of the pale alloyed one Sakura had asked about, because 'at least it was bright!'. Sasuke's chosen chain was heavier than both hers and Naruto's and so dark it was nearly black. Its links were larger too, and Sakura wondered if size actually _did_ matter, in his opinion. Having a bigger one than Naruto, anyway.

The mental image of the two boys in the midst of a dick-measuring contest popped uninvited into her head, and Sakura kept herself from flushing by blaming the image on Kakashi's perverted influence. She'd never had thoughts like that about Harry and Ron... well, not _often_, anyway.

"Let's go eat," Kakashi said, and Naruto immediately brightened, throwing a fist in the air and crowing about ramen at the top of his lungs. Kakashi bopped him on the head again. "Growing brats need more than just ramen, Naruto. We're going to Leaf Eating Leaf," he said, and Naruto stuck out his tongue before beginning to extol the virtues of ramen.

As they headed out of the shop, Sakura was surprised by how much Naruto actually knew about his favorites food. How it was cooked, what ingredients were used for different sorts of ramen, how those ingredients should be stored, how noodles were made and how long they should boil...

Even though the chain with her dogtags hung heavy around her neck, Sakura found her heart to be pretty light in this moment. Pleasant weather. Pleasant chatter. No pressing matters to attend to.

For now.

* * *

Sakura paused in her weeding, sitting back on her haunches to look up at where Kakashi was languishing in a tree right next to where she and the boys were working. The pleasant weather had continued, and she'd gotten a few nights of more restful sleep. "Kakashi-sensei?"

"Hm?" He peered down at her from above that damn orange book of his, looking so comfortable it was unfair. It was much too hot today for him to be so comfortable.

"Well, I was wondering..." she tugged a few leaves of the collection of weeds in her fist. "Do you know anything about Fuuinjutsu?"

The book in Kakashi's hand was lowered a bit further. "Yes," he said slowly, sitting a bit straighter so he could look down at her more directly. The boys had turned towards them as well, though Naruto was still halfheartedly struggling with a persistent weed, and Sasuke was making an attempt to look like he wasn't eavesdropping. If she hadn't know two redheaded twins who'd made it their art to look like they weren't up to no good, Sakura might have been fooled.

"Why?" Kakashi asked after a few seconds, when Sakura didn't continue. Perhaps she should have done this in private.

"I've been interested in Fuuinjutsu a while now," she murmured, _If you consider several years 'a while'_, then continued, "But there isn't much information on the subject available to the public," and she hadn't thought to check the library after her graduation, having been to caught up in her new team, as embarrassing (and unusual for her) as that was.

"Hmm, no. Fuuinjutsu is a pretty difficult art. One that takes a lot of studying to become a master of. Not many people specialize in it." Kakashi said, jumping down from his branch and landing next to her without a whisper of sound. Sakura nodded hesitantly, wondering if it was a bit too soon to bring up her ideas of specializing in that exact subject. The jounin tilted his head. "But I suppose you already knew that."

Nodding again, Sakura risked a look into his eye. It wasn't as blank as he could make it. She thought he seemed thoughtful, if anything.

"Take a look at the genin-level scrolls in the library, and if you're still interested..." He shrugged easily, bringing his book up to his face like it was of no consequence, but to Sakura it was a beacon of hope. She couldn't stop herself from smiling back at him, not caring if he could see it or not, before she bent down to continue with her weeding.

"Fuuinjutsu?" Naruto asked, and Sakura looked up to find him only a few feet away. "What's that?" Completely unsurprised that he hadn't remembered the word from the few times Iruka had mentioned it in the Academy, Sakura summarized the art for him, and noticed as she did that Sasuke had drifted closer as well.

"It sounds hard," the blond said, leaning back on his hands with his legs in a vee in front of him. "And studying a bunch of dusty scrolls? Bleh." He stuck out his tongue as if to illustrate the point.

"Didn't you say you'd learned Kage bunshin no jutsu from a scroll, dead-last?" the Uchiha said, snorting. Naruto had mentioned it at one of their quick in-between training lunches, but he'd been kind of vague about how exactly he'd come to possess this scroll.

Naruto stuck out his tongue at Sasuke. "Yeah, sure, because it was a scroll of awesome jutsu! I didn't have to sit around for ages and ages studying it!"

"I don't mind studying," Sakura commented with a small smile before the boys could start bickering again.

"I know, but you're kind of weird, Sakura-chan." Naruto nodded to himself, and Sakura's smile widened a little. The way he said it, blunt and honest and meaning no harm, was sort of endearing.

"She's not weird, she's just not an idiot," Sasuke said, and Sakura's eyebrows rose a little. It wasn't much of a compliment, but it was still unusual coming from the Uchiha.

"Of course she's not- hey, are you calling me an idiot?" Naruto looked suspiciously at their teammate, Sasuke smirked back, and then the argument started, as it always did. For once, Sakura couldn't bring herself to care. She had a goal now, and first thing after their training was done, she was off to visit the library. That unwelcome memories were always easier to keep at bay when she was busy was just a bonus.

* * *

**A/N:** Health issues have gotten worse instead of better, thus you get a shorter chapter that may but hopefully doesn't contain some mistakes. Blah. So if you notice any mistakes, don't be afraid to point it out or give critique. But please remember that if you want to give critique, any criticism should be constructive – eg. Mention _why_ something is bad/wrong, not just that it is.

What did you think about this chapter in general? Sakura's wartorn past coming back to haunt her? Finally getting on track with the Fuuinjutsu? The little dogtag expedition? ...And how many of you think the pleasant days will last for much longer? ;)

(…In the last chapter's AN, maybe I should have written that I thought Shikamaru was too _logical _or too _rational_ (rather than too _intelligent_) to hold the prejudices mentioned.)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!


	6. Necessary Education

**Effloresco Secundus**

_Chapter 5: Necessary Education_

* * *

The shinobi library was actually an offshoot of the regular, civilian library. In the main hall you could walk into the reading halls to the right or left for fiction or unclassified non-fiction, or you could turn to the nondescript door on one side of the main desk where the shinobi part of the library began. Before a receptionist had told her differently, Sakura had always thought it to be a staff break room or some such.

Behind the door was a brightly lit corridor, and Sakura walked through it with the feeling of being watched from somewhere. Not that she'd expected any less, really, but the feeling still made her twitch.

"Registration card?" the bored shinobi behind the desk at the end of the corridor asked, looking over the card Sakura produced in one glance and nodding. Yawning, she then lazily directed Sakura towards another nondescript door.

This hall wasn't nearly as big as either of the civilian sections, but there must have been thousands of books and scrolls here all the same. Shinobi of varying ages were seated in chairs, or occasionally on the floor or even on top of the shelves, and though Sakura assumed most of them were genin, she spotted three chuunin vests in a cluster at a table to her left.

_Fuuinjutsu, Fuuinjutsu_... Sakura spotted signs reading Ninjutsu Theory, Genjutsu Theory and even Ijutsu Theory, but nothing on Fuuinjutsu Theory.

An older genin with an armful of books was about to pass her, so Sakura decided she wasn't in the mood for scouring the whole hall aimlessly when she had the opportunity to ask someone for directions. "Excuse me," she called out, and the genin turned to look at her. He had a kind face; round glasses perched on his nose and hair in almost the same color as Kakashi's shining under the lamplight.

"Oh, Fuuinjutsu? Not many people look for that section," he said with a smile that Sakura couldn't help but return. He described how to find the part of the library she was looking for, bowed politely and went on his way. About to turn, Sakura caught the eye of a man with a strip of white cloth across his nose. The man blinked at her, nodding briefly in greeting before he turned away, but Sakura was still left with the curious impression that the man had been watching her.

Shaking her head, she moved along, determined not to let herself fall to the paranoia that had been a large part of her first year in this world and that had caused nothing but trouble and suspicions on her mother's part.

The feeling of browsing books and being unable to choose just a few to take with her was a familiar and comfortable one, and Sakura's brow smoothed out as she searched the shelves. She should have brought her bag with her, because already four different scrolls and two books had caught her eye. Well, perhaps she could take two... or maybe four of the tomes with her and read the larger, heavier ones here.

With that thought in mind, Sakura pulled out _The Basics of Sealmaking_, and moved to an unoccupied table. After skimming the first few pages, she thought it might be a more comprehensive version of the scrolls in the Academy library.

"This section is closing, miss," a voice interrupted Sakura's focused reading, and she blinked up at an unfamiliar shinobi who she assumed was an attending librarian.

"Already?" She's only managed to read through the book once, what with having to stop to take notes once every spread. At this point, she wouldn't really need to take any of the books back with her.

He cocked his visible eyebrow at her. Half his face was covered by dark brown hair, and he was only wearing enough of his mask to cover his chin. "It's almost nine, you know." Sakura blinked again, torn from her appraisal, and her mouth opened in a small 'oh'.

"Oh no- I didn't even tell mom I was going here today-" Sakura gathered up the book, pushed it into the empty slot she'd picked it from several hours ago and cursed herself for her tendency to fall into a book and lose track of reality.

"Huh, she must be getting worried, then," the man commented, and Sakura very nearly shot him a glare. "Want me to send a bird?"

Sakura paused in her frantic gathering of notes. "What?"

The shinobi smiled. "I work in the Messenger Tower at the moment, so I could send a bird ahead to inform your mother of your location..." he trailed off, a question in the tilt of his head.

"I'm not going to tell some stranger my address, but thank you anyway," Sakura said smartly, tucking her notes away. The man shrugged, not looking like he disapproved of that answer.

"Fair enough." He eyed her for a moment. "You know you can't let anyone below the rank of genin-"

"- see my notes. Yes, I know." Normally she wouldn't have interrupted an older, higher-ranked person, but she was frazzled enough right now that she couldn't bring herself to care. Murmured something apologetic she hoped softened her rudeness, Sakura then quickly made her way to the exit.

He kept pace with her, and though it was uncomfortable to have someone all but outright following her, they weren't alone in the library and wouldn't be alone on the streets of Konoha either. Not that she was about to let him follow her home. She said as much over her shoulder as they exited, but he just grinned at her.

"You're very suspicious, genin-chan!"

Sakura turned around to face him, putting a hand on her hip. "And you're very annoying, chunin-san." Looking him up and down, she huffed. "My team leader is Hatake Kakashi. Go accost him if you're that curious about me. And if he doesn't tell you anything, I'll take that as a sign that I should report you." She didn't appreciate feeling hunted.

There was a flash of surprise in the man's dark eyes, probably at her vehemence. "Maybe I just want to talk to a pretty girl?" he tried, though it sounded weak.

"I'm twelve," Sakura said flatly, and watched the shinobi deflate. "I don't know what you're up to, but I'll make sure to remember your face." And height, and hopefully his general movement pattern.

"Since when were genin this suspicious?" the man muttered to himself, and mustered another smile. "I know Hatake. I'm Izumo." He waved and Sakura wasn't sure she could trust his bright eyes. He could be a really good liar... or just an awful spy. The fact that he'd been so blatant did lend some credence to him not being a potential enemy, though.

"I'll see if Kakashi-sensei recognizes your name and description. If he does, I won't report you."

"Not like being reported to Hatake isn't almost as bad as being sent to Ibiki," the guy muttered under his breath, but nodded.

Sakura threw him a sharp look before turning away. "Don't follow me." Grinning again, he gave her a two-fingered salute and disappeared.

Sakura took the long way home, ducking into different alleys and tracing back her steps to make it as difficult as possible to trace her. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

–

Later that night, Sakura went to bed wondering if Sayuri didn't have traces of her first mother in her. She'd come home apologetic, expecting Sayuri to be half out of her mind with worry, only to find her mother seated at the kitchen table with a book in one hand and an apple in the other, looking calm as you please.

Sakura had already half-started in on her explanation that she'd just forgot the time, only to have Sayuri wave her off. "When you didn't get home on time, I contacted your jounin-sensei to ask if he was keeping you for some reason, only to receive the answer that he'd sent you to the library." Here she'd thrown Sakura a dry look. "I _know_ how you are with books, daughter mine, so I passed by the library main hall, asked if the receptionist had seen you and found that your card had been registered in the genin section."

She'd shrugged, and Sakura had tried not looking too startled at her words. Her first mother, Jean Granger, who'd been a very no-nonsense, not-prone-to-hysterics kind of woman, had been likewise thoroughly methodical when she worried about Hermione. Of course, Sakura never told her mother the truth about the important (terrifying) things that happened at Hogwarts every year, so that might have had something to do with Jean's lack of hysteria. She wasn't sure where her new mother's organized calm came from, though.

Sakura apologized to Sayuri, if with some bemusement, and had been given a look stern enough that she'd make certain not to forget herself like that again. Burrowing into a book was no excuse to chance her mother's worry.

* * *

The moment the team had been assigned their first D-rank for the day and moved out into the village, Sakura asked, "Kakashi-sensei, do you know someone called Izumo?" She'd turned away from where she was packing groceries into seven different bags, grateful for the break in the monotonous work. What kind of mission was grocery shopping anyway? She'd seen the older man's guards when they left their employer's house – couldn't he have had one of them do this?

Sometimes Sakura suspected that having the funds to hire a genin team for common chores was a mark of status among Konoha's wealthier members.

"Hmm? If you mean the chunin with only his chin covered, then yes." He hadn't looked up from his book, but Sakura had learned to ignore the irritation that arose from the feeling of being ignored fairly quickly. If only because she had a nagging impression that Kakashi knew it annoyed her, and delighted in it.

She started packing again. "And he's... okay?"

Kakashi blinked slowly at her over the book. "Well, when we were genin he had the most awful sense of timing when it came to self-entertaining 'nightly activities' -"

"Kakashi-sensei!" "_Pervert!_" Sasuke didn't add anything to hers and Naruto's protests, but Sakura could see a light dusting of pink over his cheekbones. He was also glaring something fierce down at the cucumber he was trying to force into an overflowing bag.

"Other than that, he's a decent shinobi," Kakashi finished with an air of long-suffering, like he thought they were being most unreasonable and rude. Sakura could hear Naruto huff, and agreed with the sound. "Why?"

"I ran into him yesterday, and he appeared to have some stalker-tendencies," Sakura said vaguely, then hefted one of the bags onto her shoulder, thankful for her shinobi strength. As Hermione, she'd never have been able to carry this much so easily.

"Ehh? You met a stalker, Sakura-chan?" Naruto managed to look both fascinated and worried while also awkwardly juggling two bags, one of which contained stalks of celery long enough to poke his left cheek. Two clones were also picking up bags, scowling when one of them tripped over the other.

She smiled at the blond, shaking her head. "I don't know. He followed me out of the library, and I wasn't sure why, but then he said that he knew Kakashi-sensei..."

"And that was supposed to be reassuring?" Sasuke asked with a snort, and Sakura held back a surprised surprised glance. _Was that a joke?_ Sasuke had over the course of the past few weeks been acting... not more open exactly, but slightly less closed off and distant. Sakura smiled at him, hoping to encourage more of that attitude. If that dry joke was typical of the Uchiha's kind of humor, she'd like to see more of it.

"It's not precisely a glowing recommendation of his character, no..." she added quietly, and her comment was rewarded with a smirk from Sasuke and a snigger from Naruto. And his two clones.

"I can hear you, you know," Kakashi said, like they hadn't been perfectly aware of that.

Sakura stared at him for a moment. "Oops," she said flatly. Kakashi muttered something about her general 'uncuteness' and turned back to his book. Sakura traded glances with the boys, and for once there was no bickering or aloofness in between the three of them.

"Alright, let's head back to the old man!" Naruto said, breaking the moment, and his clones immediately bounced down the road without waiting for a reply. Their creator yelled after them, but in true Naruto-fashion they only turned back to stick their tongues out at him before continuing on ahead. They were out of sight a second later, apparently racing each other.

"Aren't they supposed to listen to you?" Sakura asked, amused, as Naruto scowled.

"They totally should!" the blond said, then frowned some more. With a decisive movement he brought his hands together to make two new clones, who took off after the first two. "But they don't! They act like -" He made a vague gesture after the running clones, looking annoyed.

"- you?" Sasuke finished, with a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Shocking."

"Oh, shut up. Bastard," Naruto muttered under his breath, though he didn't actually disagree. Sakura hid a smile, pretending to focus on their employer's now visible house. "Clones are really useful, you know, and -" Naruto abruptly cut his burgeoning rant off, and Sakura watched with alarm as the blond's face rapidly lost all color.

"Naruto?" Between two heartbeats, her amusement had been replaced with dread as heavy as tungsten. Sakura's leg muscles flexed, and her focus sharpened.

"What the hell," the boy mouthed, the words barely a whisper. His eyebrows drew together over wide, horrified eyes. There was a long pause, and Sakura felt herself tense. "They're dead..."

Sakura tensed further, a flash of George's face as he stared down at Fred's body zipping past like a photo in her mind.

"Who is, dead-last?" Sasuke said, a sharp shard of worry undoing the calm tone he was going for.

"My clone," Naruto said, swallowed, and Sakura's worry tripped over itself in confusion. But then the blond continued, "It dispelled, and..."

"And you received its memories?" Kakashi asked, and Sakura didn't startle even though she hadn't noticed how close the jounin had come. "Did it reach the client's house?" he asked, calm and steady, book nowhere to be seen.

"Uh, yeah..." Naruto's throat worked like he was about to be sick.

"That old man is dead?" Sasuke asked, hand hovering vaguely over his kunai pouch, like he wasn't sure whether to arm himself or not. Naruto nodded, his fingers flexing. Sakura carefully put a hand on the blond's shoulder, feeling the battle-cold she hadn't had use for since the war settle in her stomach like frost.

Kakashi's posture turned crisp and business-like. "Is Abe-san the only one deceased?" Naruto blinked, then shook his head. "How many others?" Naruto blinked again, face going grey at the edges, but then held up three shaky-looking fingers. "Is there blood?" Kakashi asked carefully, and Naruto slowly shook his head. He rubbed at his face as if to get rid of some invisible grime.

"I th-think... probably poison? There is a weird smell..." he trailed off, swallowing convulsively.

"In the air or just around the dead?" Sakura asked, not noticing Kakashi's glance at her at that. Her mind whirled like a toy top. If the strange smell was just generally in the air, it could be an airborn poison and if that was the case, they couldn't enter the house as they were. Plus everyone in the area would have to be evacuated.

"Just around the, um, b-bodies. Or at least around Abe. Uhm, he was c-collapsed over the kitchen table, and I, uh, _my clone_, the other one, turned him around to- to-" Naruto squeezed his eyes shut, then rubbed at them with the back of his hand. "- check on him. But he was already d-dead. Then it poofed out." He was taking it a lot better than she'd thought he would, considering how naive Naruto still was, but then again he had been trained as a shinobi for several years now. And from the description he provided, the scene didn't seem like it was too gruesome. Nothing like the sort of mess Greyback liked to leave behind.

"And your other clones checked the other bodies?" Sakura guessed, squeezing her teammate's shoulder.

Naruto nodded, rubbing at his face again. "At least one of the others, yeah."

"How did your clone dispel?" Kakashi asked, and the blond shakily explained it'd been so shocked to find their employer dead that it'd tripped backwards and dispelled when it hit the ground. Nobody commented on it. In fact, Sakura thought Sasuke looked faintly concerned rather than contemptuous, like he would have under normal circumstances – though of course that concern wasn't necessarily directed at Naruto. It could just be the situation in general that concerned him. Still, Sakura liked thinking the best of people she cared about even a little, and Sasuke was nowhere near as cold and hard as he tried to be.

"Alright, we're heading in. Diamond formation with me at the head and Naruto at the back. Keep your panchrest pills at hand," Kakashi said, voice sharp and commanding in a way Sakura had never heard it before. She moved to stand on the jounin's right, four steps behind him, and from the corner of her eye saw Sasuke do the same to their teacher's left. Kakashi didn't appear to be paying attention to anything going on behind him, but he didn't move in until Naruto was four steps behind and between her and Sasuke.

Sakura mentally went over what she had on her today: several kunai and shuriken, three of her long senbon, food pills, panchrest pills (as they were a lot more expensive than the generic food pills though, she only had two of them on her), rolls of bandages, a small pack of ointment – that was about it. During the course of the D-ranks, she'd gotten into the habit of packing lightly, since most of what she carried with her didn't get much use anyway.

Cursing herself for that as they moved into the house and there was a distinct lack of guards by the door, Sakura discreetly armed herself with one of her senbon. There was a tenseness in her legs she hadn't felt since the Battle of Downing Street in '99, the Second War's final battle. There had only been two handfuls of Death Eaters left at that point, and Sakura still wasn't sure what they'd imagined would happen if they'd actually succeeded in their plan to assassinate the muggle prime minister.

In the winter of '99, there hadn't been enough followers of what the Death Eaters referred to as 'The Old Way' and everybody else called 'racist crap' for the war to continue, even should their attack have left the prime minister dead. They hadn't even died as martyrs for the cause, if that's what they'd been hoping for with their fool's gamble, since everybody under suspicion for Death Eater activities had been so closely monitored in the time following the Battle of Hogwarts that even the slightest slip of the tongue would have left their already very shaky reputation in tatters. There were no renewed efforts among blood purists to change the tide of the war; the attack never became any kind of rallying cry. Instead, everybody that might have had an interest in answering that renewed call to arms had immediately distanced themselves from it, in true Slytherin fashion.

Sakura's eyes narrowed, her reminiscing interrupted when the first body came into view. There had been no suspicious or hostile movements at their team's entrance, and though her ears were sharpened for the slightest sound, the house was quiet. Much too quiet. Their elderly employee had had children and grandchildren and Sakura desperately hoped that they hadn't been here when the intruders showed up. Because if they had, and the house was this quiet, there was a very large chance that they'd also be laid out like this somewhere in the house.

Their was a small cup of tea upturned on the table, and the sound of drops hitting the pool of tea on the floor grated in Sakura's ears. Abe was pale and still, his temple meeting the tabletop like he just sagged forwards as the poison took hold. His fingers was still lightly curled around the ear of the cup.

"Shit," Sasuke muttered, and Sakura's fingers twitched around her senbon. She hadn't realized how hard she'd been gripping it, and had to make a conscious effort to unclench her fingers. Her dark-haired teammate's face was a shade paler than usual, though he didn't look too frightened or nauseated. Sakura abruptly wondered if he'd been there when his family was killed, but the horror she'd normal feel at that thought was distant in this quiet, focused moment.

"Uhm, Kakashi-sensei, should we-?" Naruto made a vague sort of gesture towards the three bodies. A man Sakura recognized as the servant who'd opened the door for them this morning, and an elderly woman Sakura recognized as Abe's 'lady friend'.

"No. Don't touch anything," Kakashi said tersely, bit the tip of his thumb and worked with lightning speed through a series of hand seals. Crouching, he slammed an open hand to the floor. Seals spread in a pattern around his spread fingers, before with a poof of smoke, a small dog appeared in the pattern's midst.

The jounin held a summoning contract, was Sakura's subsequent realization. She'd heard of them, of course, but they were supposed to be rare. The only other shinobi with summoning contracts that she could name were the equally famous and infamous Sannin. Then again, a shinobi of Kakashi's caliber was almost as scarce a breed as the Sannin were.

"Pakkun, can you identify the poison used here?" Kakashi gestured towards the tea and Abe-san's body, then stood up again. "Do any of you have any experience with poison outside of Academy lectures?" Sasuke and Naruto both shook their heads, which made Sakura hesitate for a moment before she nodded. She didn't know much about poison, at least not poisons of this world, but from the lectures in the Academy, she'd surmised that the general making of poisons and their anti-dotes were the same here as they'd been back home, just without any magical components.

Kakashi gave her a long look, before nodding. "Stay with Pakkun, isolate and quarantine." Sakura saluted. "Naruto, send clones to scout the other rooms." Naruto paled, but nodded. Sakura wasn't sure if he thought he'd be seen as weak if he protested having to see more dead bodies, or if he for once just thought it better to obey than question their teacher. Kakashi added, "I want your physical self to stay here in the kitchen in case Sakura needs help." Sakura was quite sure the jounin had noticed Naruto's horror, and was trying to soften the nastiness of the assignment. He didn't relent, though. This was a part of being a shinobi; this was necessary education.

Kakashi turned to Sasuke. "Sasuke, with me. We'll be scouting the perimeter." He made a handsign, and two clones appeared. Though they showed up with a lot less smoke than Naruto's usually did, Sakura recognized them as Kage bunshin. They disappeared out of two different windows in a flash of movement that made Sakura acutely aware of just how fast their teacher must be, even though he never used that speed against her and the boys in their occasional spars with him.

Sasuke nodded, pausing briefly before saying, "If your clones are scouting the perimeter too, wouldn't it -"

"They're not." Kakashi threw the Uchiha a flat look. "They're acting as guards and sentinels. I wouldn't leave Sakura and Naruto here unguarded." Usually, Naruto would have shouted something about how he didn't need to be guarded at this point, and Sasuke would have been frowning heavily in Kakashi's direction. That was not the case today. From the corner of her eye, Sakura thought she saw a flicker of relief in Naruto's pale face. Sasuke's shoulders seemed to loosen a little too, though his expression didn't change.

They headed out and Sakura turned her attention to the wrinkly little pug as it sniffed around the spilled tea and the body of their client. It looked up at her with calm, old eyes that reminded Sakura of how Professor Flitwick had sometimes looked in his more serious moments. Though maybe it was impolite to compare her Charms professor to a dog... And she was letting her mind carry her away. Unacceptable. Just because she hadn't been in this kind of position for quite a few years, that didn't mean she could allow herself to be anything less than focused on the situation at hand.

"It's some kind of organic venom," the pug said, voice gravelly, and then his shoulder blades moved in a way that Sakura interpreted as a shrug. "Can't narrow it down more than that. Scent's too covered by some artificial oil- reminds me of cyanide, 'cept cyanide wouldn't give the human a peaceful death."

Sakura nodded. The pug was a shinobi then, not just a talking animal. Nin-animal, she remembered. She'd known enough non-humans not to find her resolution to treat him like she would any other superior officer too strange. "I can't smell it, but from the sheen when the light hits it," she pointed at the pool of tea, "I'd also guess it's some kind of oil." What oily poisons had they been taught about in the Academy? Castor bean oil, of course, but that caused convulsions- most Academy poison they'd been told of had noticeable symptoms preceding death.

No surprise there, really. You couldn't really do anything about a poison that didn't cause any symptoms since you wouldn't know you'd been poisoned in the first place, unless the poison was odorous or of a particular taste. And not many high-level shinobi would use poisons that were easily detectable. That was one point in favor of Abe and his people having been killed by a low-level shinobi, or another civilian... unless the murderer didn't think civilians would have recognized its taste (which they hadn't). But that would mean the murderer either didn't realize or didn't care if shinobi recognized the poison used when they came to investigate. Sloppiness? The stupid kind of arrogance?

Or something else entirely?

* * *

**A/N:** Argh, real life. For all you reviewers who wished me good health after the last A/N, thank you. I'm still not well, but better, and your kindness cheered me up. (And again, there might be some mistakes here... hopefully not, but if so, I'll be back to edit.)

What did you think of this chapter? Felt a bit choppy to me, unfortunately, but work is eating my life... plus health issues in the family now too :/ Bear with me, please.


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